The Lost Wages of Sin
by Nyx Fixx
Summary: More disturbing adventures from Vegas. Chapter 18 up today.
1. Default Chapter

Foreword:  
  
Good evening, readers. This is a story I've been working on for several years - one of those fiendish things that starts as a simple idea, and somehow grows into an obsessive epic when one is not looking. I've been asked repeatedly to post it here at FF.net, and after at least a year of thought I've decided to go ahead for various reasons.  
  
The story is, even after three years, unfinished. I know what the final chapters will contain, and have a finish in mind, but have not, as yet, come to it. Nevertheless, I am once again working on it after a long hiatus. For those who have already seen it, I apologize both for the redundancy and, as always, for the long delay. For those who are new to the story, be aware that although it is not yet completed as a whole, there are nineteen completed chapters in which to decide if you like it. I hope you will.  
  
It's a new venue, and a new beginning for The Lost Wages of Sin, and for me. I can't think of a better time to start than New Year's Day. Happy new year to everyone, and may 2004 bring us all everything we hope for.  
  
Thank you, Nyx Fixx  
  
The Lost Wages of Sin - Chapter One  
  
Chapter One  
  
Buenos Aires: August, 1998  
  
Hannibal Lecter was sitting on the terrace of his Beaux Arts mansion, enjoying the early morning sunshine and peering at the screen of his laptop. The sun was at an inconvenient angle and glared on the surface of the screen, partially obscuring the text of the particular personals ad he was reading.  
  
Dr. Lecter was feeling lazy this morning; he had a natural inclination to be a late sleeper when circumstances permitted. He considered moving from the chaise he was currently ensconced in to a shadier seat beneath the big market umbrella across the terrace for a moment.  
  
No. Not now. Too much trouble. The sun felt too good. Too early in the morning. Whatever. He could read the rest of the personals later.  
  
He bookmarked the web page he was perusing, put his head back and closed his eyes, then kicked his slippers off his small, slim feet. He wanted to enjoy the feeling of the warm sunshine on his bare soles and toes.  
  
It was far too early in the morning for a long, strenuous walk ALL the way across the terrace, a full SIX feet at least.  
  
He smiled to himself. Clarice WOULD rise at the crack of dawn. Worse, upon arising, she would generally be in a horribly good humor, and would chirp bright conversation like a happy, noisy little bird as she attired herself in some ghastly running costume or other. Eventually, she'd leave him alone and go out and run. But not before ruining his sleep and vexing him no end and causing him to suspect that he would never, ever succeed in discouraging this unattractive milk-maid penchant for AM cheerfulness in her.  
  
He'd tried everything. He'd complained. He'd tried to ignore her. He'd tried to distract her. He'd made insulting remarks.  
  
Once, when she'd been particularly boisterous (and it had been particularly early) he'd observed that "You can take the hick out of the sticks, but . . . " and sighed.  
  
"Do remember to plow the north forty while you're out there, Clarice. Better slop the hogs, too," he'd added and groaned as he covered his head with a pillow.  
  
Clarice had risen a full hour earlier than normal for two weeks thereafter in retaliation, AND sang all of Hank Williams' greatest hits verse for verse on each of these mornings, all in her clear (and carrying) contralto.  
  
The dismal truth was inescapable. She was a "morning person".  
  
It was frightening what horrors a man in love will willingly endure.  
  
The worst of it was, he could never go back to sleep after she was gone. He had been so fundamentally flabbergasted to have won her in the end, after so many lost years, that it had taken him weeks of concerted effort to make the huge leap of faith it took to stop covertly following her on these morning exercise runs.  
  
He'd managed to put aside the patently mad notion that she might somehow disappear in a puff of smoke if he allowed her too far out of his sight fairly early on in their unexpected alliance. But it had proven far more difficult to put his cognizance of the very real dangers she was exposed to, alone, every time she left his side, into perspective. She was competent, alert, and smart. She could take care of herself, and would not appreciate him doubting that fact. And he could never protect her from every ill the wicked world contained, no matter how he might wish to. So, he'd made the effort and had stopped following her.  
  
But he could never sleep when she was out running. That was still beyond him. He didn't worry, not exactly, but he was . . . vigilant . . . at least until her safe return. Vigilance and sleep, he'd learned over the past year, did not mix well. He'd toss and turn for a bit after she would leave, and finally would have to get up and go find something to do to occupy himself until she came home. It was really quite absurd of him.  
  
As Dr. Lecter was wiggling his toes in the sun and ruminating on the exigencies of diurnal circadian rhythms, Clarice Starling was in the street below, using her keys on the deadbolts of the front door and keying in the disarm codes for the alarms.  
  
He heard her light, rapid steps on the stairs as she ran (actually RAN!) up the last flight to the top level of the mansion. Then the sound of her key in the lock to their top floor suite of rooms.  
  
"Hi, honey," she called from the door, a comic Donna Reed lilt in her voice. "I'm home!"  
  
He smiled, amused. He was out on the terrace, she wouldn't see.  
  
In time, she bounced out onto the terrace, dressed in baggy sweats, chipper as a young dolphin. Appalling. Carrying two large steaming mugs of fresh coffee on a small tray. She looked flushed and glorious after her run, face glowing, hair in fetching disarray, the scent of fresh, clean perspiration clinging to her skin.  
  
Even the worst impositions could sometimes present compensations.  
  
"Want some coffee?" she asked, and perched on the foot of his chaise.  
  
"Umm."  
  
"I'll take that rather surly vocalization as a 'yes', how would that be? Here."  
  
She handed him one of the mugs and moved his feet into her lap to make more room for herself on the chaise.  
  
"Mmm," he said, trying not to smile.  
  
"Drink," she said. "You obviously need some caffeine."  
  
"Hmm," he replied, and earned an annoyed grimace that succeeded in making him laugh. He drank some of the coffee.  
  
"Pretty cranky this morning, aren't you?" she said.  
  
"I'm tired. Some pleasure crazed sex fiend got hold of me last night. It was very alarming."  
  
Another irritated grimace. Ah. Excellent.  
  
"Anyone I know?" she asked.  
  
"I'm not sure. I haven't completely ruled out multiple personality disorder."  
  
"I thought all that "Sybill" stuff was a myth."  
  
"I'd have thought so too. Any blank spaces in your memory, Clarice? Any gaps in your recollection of last night's sordid escapades?"  
  
"I don't recall you looking particularly alarmed. On the contrary. I remember that much."  
  
"I was humoring you. It seemed best."  
  
"Oh, you were, were you? Well, it's your own fault. I couldn't help myself. You ARE the fuck of the century."  
  
That got him. He had to laugh. Such blatant flattery. Such forthright vulgarity. Such nonsense.  
  
"Well, of course," he said. "What did you expect? Perhaps you should alert the media."  
  
Now she was laughing. "Oh, God, the 'Tattler' would give me a million for an exclusive."  
  
"I have no objection. Be sure to throw in some invention - say I may drink blood, have cloven hooves and a forked penis, but I'm still just another selfish pig in bed. You know, things like that. And hold out for two million."  
  
Now they were both laughing.  
  
"You know, I think you might actually like that, " she said, chuckling. She looked at the laptop. "What are you doing this morning? Besides lying around out here in the sun and thinking of aggravating things to say to me, I mean."  
  
"Oh, 'Tattler' on-line. Odd you should mention it. Going through the personals."  
  
"The international fugitive's social register. Anything for us?"  
  
"Actually, yes. I've been giving it some thought while you were out."  
  
"What's there?"  
  
"Tell me, Clarice, do you ever miss the States?"  
  
She stared at him for a moment.  
  
"What's there?" she repeated. She took his feet in her hands, curling her fingers around the insteps. "Remember, your feet are in the hands of a pleasure crazed sex fiend. Tell me what's up or suffer the consequences."  
  
"You don't scare ME, you little brute."  
  
"Is that so?" she ran a fingernail up the sole of the left foot, slowly, causing the whole foot to curl. "Talk. Or else . . . "  
  
"Is that the best you can do, Clarice? The truth is, I quite like that. Do that some more."  
  
"I want to know what's in the 'Tattler', damn it!"  
  
He smiled. This was developing into a good game.  
  
"You haven't answered my question," he reminded her.  
  
She lunged for the laptop, but was not quite quick enough. She was strong and fast, but he was faster. Even at this ungodly hour. It was short work to catch her in a restrictive embrace. The laptop slid off his chest, and fell a few inches to the terrace floor with a small plastic tap and an electronic beep. Now he had her in ear-whispering range.  
  
"Do you ever miss the States?" he asked again, directly into her ear. "Talk, or suffer the consequences."  
  
"You don't scare ME, you overbearing beast."  
  
At this point, they were both laughing a little too hard to talk that easily. He nipped her earlobe and tasted the good, clean sweat of her run. Umm. Intoxicating. He licked her throat from base to chin. Delicious.  
  
"Mmm," murmuring in her ear. "Salt . . . metal . . . open air . . . jacaranda pollen . . . you ran through the park, didn't you . . . hmm . . . and Clarice . . . just Clarice . . . "  
  
"Mmm. Is that the best you can . . . oh!"  
  
"Do you, Clarice?" he asked, seriously now. He stared into her face. "Do you ever miss it? The known, the familiar? I wonder, sometimes. You've given up so much."  
  
She shrugged off his hands and sat up, then smiled, an astringent, not so good smile. "Oh, yes. I threw it all away. A dazzling career, a full rich life, the esteem of my peers, everything. All for you. I cry myself to sleep every night."  
  
He did not choose to rise to this challenge. This was bitterness she'd have to resolve on her own. In time. It was still too soon, only a year since Muskrat Farm and the abominable betrayal by her former superiors. The destruction of the final shreds of her faith, the abrupt and rude termination of her world view. She was still angry, as well she should be. The ruinous death and consumption of just one symbolic tormentor was only a paltry restitution for the years of systematic abuse, in his opinion. He could spill a sea of blood on her behalf and never repay one tenth of what was owed.  
  
A lucky thing for Jack Crawford that he'd died in bed a month ago. He'd had an outstanding account, to be sure. But there were others who owed. Clint Pearsall, for example.  
  
Dr. Lecter put aside this line of speculation for the time being. He and Clarice were an odd couple. That either one would kill for the other was a given, something they'd both already done, several times over. In their skewed alignment, NOT killing for the other was the truer test of commitment.  
  
But she had never asked him to promise that. This life they were leading was precarious. She was a realist. When he'd asked her about it, she'd told him she needed him at full effectiveness, unconstrained by some romantic vow to her, made in a thoughtless moment when danger seemed far away. Because danger was really never far away. The day might come when they'd have to fight to survive. She wanted him unencumbered on that day. Her first line of defense, lethally competent, relentlessly reliable. She now valued the very things in him that had once been the essence of the great gulf between them That had made him the media icon of dread he'd become.  
  
"The whole world is afraid of you," she'd said. "That's good. When the time comes, they might not shoot so straight."  
  
But none of that meant she approved of gratuitous slaughter. His old hobbies appalled her as much as they ever had. It was strange to him how that had not changed, when so much else had undergone such radical transformation. If the truth were known, he did not really understand it. There was still so much he could not fathom.  
  
So, if he would not poison her emotions toward him, he must compromise, at least in this. Compromise. Not a familiar or easily attainable skill for him.  
  
But not impossible. He had not felt as much inclination to the old ways over the past years, anyway. Not in his first stay in South America, not in Florence. That cold and compelling red rage, the bottomless greed for terror and blood, the terrible black ecstasy of the hunt and the kill - those hungers had become less acute over the years. Perhaps his stay in the asylum had taught him something of use after all. Such things need not define him. Not solely. There were other pleasures in the world. There were other passions. And there was the fragile freedom to pursue them.  
  
And now there was Clarice. Only once before had he ever had anything of such value to defend. He had failed then, but he would never fail now. He would not feed his ego with petty diversions and futile vendettas and pointless dark jokes as he had when there had been nothing to lose; not now, when such indulgences created needless jeopardy for them both.  
  
But he'd call down the lightning and make a charnel house of the world, had he the power, before he'd relinquish a single moment of the combined future they now shared.  
  
Ah, well. It was too early, and far too nice a day, to be gloomy. And they still must decide what, if anything, to do about the ad.  
  
He took one of her hands and brought it to his lips, just grazing the skin, an oddly courtly gesture. "Clarice, I'm distressing you. Forgive me. Here, read this."  
  
He retrieved the small computer from where it had fallen, and showed her the screen.  
  
"The third one in the right column. Read it aloud, if you would," he said.  
  
She located the ad and read it : "'Remember what I said? It's a boy. US October 15. RSVP, BYOB, all that good shit. Details later. MV'"  
  
"'MV'?" Clarice, ever the investigator, thought first of the signature. "Margot Verger?"  
  
"You are astute, Agent Starling. What else does the message tell you?"  
  
"It sounds like an invitation of some kind. But to what? And what does 'it's a boy' mean?"  
  
"She and her beloved have had a blessed event, it seems. The in-vitro fertilization procedures must have worked. A boy, a male heir to the Verger fortune."  
  
"How is that possible? Who's the father?"  
  
He laughed, an ugly, serrated laugh. "Mason. In a manner of speaking. I wonder if the child looks like him?"  
  
He saw that Clarice would not ask him more about this. There were some details of his prior business dealings with Margot Verger that she preferred not to know. And his continuing virulent contempt for the late Mason, well beyond the grave, was a personal boundary of his that she chose not to breach. The art of compromise. She'd had to learn it too.  
  
"So . . . the invitation . . . it's to a . . . "  
  
"To the christening, " he confirmed. "Margot promised she'd invite me, should the child be male."  
  
"Why? Why would she do that?"  
  
"She intended to name the babe after me," he said, smiling, still intensely amused by Margot's wickedly funny practical joke, even a year later. "That being the case, she could hardly fail to extend an invitation. It would be the worst kind of rudeness."  
  
"Oh. Okay, " Clarice said. "I see that, even if I don't quite understand why she'd name her boy after you. No, don't tell me. Do you think she REALLY wants you to come, though?"  
  
"Hmm. Yes . . . I think perhaps she does. Margot is . . . well, she's a friend, in an odd sort of way. I like her. And she'd never do something like this just out of empty courtesy. Or even to appease me. It's not her style. She has no patience for such things. You met her once, didn't you? Wouldn't you agree?"  
  
"Very short acquaintance. But yes, she did strike me as unusually straightforward."  
  
"Yes. Pragmatic. So, the question before us, dear Clarice, is not whether Margot really wants us to come, but whether we really want to go. Yes or no? Should we or shouldn't we? I'll ask you again: do you ever miss the States?"  
  
Clarice thought for a moment.  
  
"It's a risk," she finally said.  
  
"To be sure. But not an unmanageable one. And that's still not an answer. Put that aspect of the problem aside, for the moment, please. Ask yourself what you'd LIKE to do, were there no difficulty involved. Don't you ever wish to hear your own native tongue on every stranger's lips? To be where you know the cultural 'short-hand', the idiom, the slang, the referential sets? Don't you miss it? Apple pie and the American Way? Sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll?"  
  
"Now you're making fun of me."  
  
"Not entirely. Tell me what you want, Clarice. And that's what we'll do."  
  
She sighed. "Why ask me? She's YOUR friend."  
  
"You DO miss those things. I thought so."  
  
"Goddamnit, why the hell ask if you already know! People say you're the most dangerous man on the planet. Has anyone ever told you you're the most annoying man on the planet too?"  
  
"You have. Frequently. And you still haven't answered me. Shall I tell you why you haven't?"  
  
"Do tell," she said, sarcastically. "I can hardly stop you."  
  
"You think I'll be unhappy if you do. That I'll take it as a kind of rejection if you miss your home, because now your home is here. We've gained so much, beyond any reasonable expectation, you and I, but you've begun to want more. You do not wish to admit that. Not to yourself, still less to me. And you believe I'll think less of you for wanting a taste of what's familiar."  
  
"Will you?"  
  
"Of course not. It's natural, you're human. I think. I sometimes think you might be an earth elemental, cleverly disguised as a renegade FBI agent, but that's probably because I'm a nut, as the 'Tattler' regularly reveals. In addition to being the most annoying man on the planet."  
  
She barked a quick laugh and pecked his cheek. "I KNEW you wouldn't let that one pass!"  
  
"Clarice, this is an insular life we're leading. Perhaps too insular. I love you. I want you to be pleased and I do whatever I can to amuse you. But I am not the beginning and the end. There's more to the world than just us."  
  
"Is there? Air and earth - "  
  
"Fire and ice," he finished. "Everything there is, in the alchemist's view. We hold an embarrassing surfeit of riches, certainly, the veritable Philosopher's Stone. But this is the age of technology; there are more elements than just the four. We could be in the US in a matter of hours. Would you like to go?"  
  
"Do YOU want to go?"  
  
"Clarice - "  
  
"No, it's a fair question. Do you ever miss the States?"  
  
"No. I sometimes miss Europe, in that way. Florence. But that's not really the issue. I don't want us to spend the rest of our lives cringing at the sound of an unfamiliar step. We cannot make every decision based on the malice of our enemies. You say it's a risk, and so it is. But life IS risk. Should we decline this invitation, I want to be certain it's because we don't really want to go. Not because we're afraid to."  
  
"No fear. Damn the torpedoes - full speed ahead?"  
  
"Soon or late, we all must face the same end. Just passing through, all of us. Why creep by, when one can run? Yes, Clarice, I do want to accept this invitation. I want to see my namesake. I'd like to see Miss Margot again. I'd like to see the world you left behind, through your eyes. Is that so strange?"  
  
"No, not strange. You're not unfriendly. You used to maintain an active social life."  
  
"Yes. I enjoyed entertaining, once upon a time. But we're not talking about me."  
  
"God almighty, you're like a rat terrier with a bone. All right. What are we talking about?"  
  
"Fun."  
  
She stared at him for a time, thinking.  
  
"Mr. Crawford used to say that's what it was always all about, for you. Fun."  
  
A direct challenge, mentioning Crawford. And in this context. She knew full well what he thought of her residual loyalty to the deceased section chief. A faithless and craven would-be puppet master who would send his best and brightest unarmed into battles he himself would shun.  
  
But not unintelligent. The assessment was not without merit, as far as it went. Jack had always been just a little too smart for his own good. And for the good of those he commanded, of course.  
  
To Clarice, Dr. Lecter said nothing. He wanted an answer, and he was prepared to wait to get it. It wouldn't be the first time. It wouldn't be the last.  
  
Finally, she spoke, a small, unhappy voice. "Is that what this is? Fun? Some reckless adventure with the razor's edge, because things here are getting too quiet for you? You still scream in your sleep, sometimes, you know. Don't think I don't notice. I guess I'm not the beginning and the end either."  
  
She sighed again, a painful sound. Then raised her direct gaze to him, chin lifted.  
  
"Am I starting to bore you?"  
  
He understood that this was an honest concern on her part, and not entirely unwarranted. She knew he did not tolerate boredom well, there were case files to prove it. He also understood that she was projecting her own nebulous guilt and sense of aimlessness onto the nearest available target. He also understood that for all the steel in her, she still sometimes craved reassurance.  
  
But he could not entirely suppress the surge of injured anger her question engendered in him.  
  
He sometimes craved reassurance too.  
  
He was also human. And none in all the world knew it better than she.  
  
He saw the hardening and drawing of his own expression mirrored in her eyes, in the look of instant regret that clouded them. Love was a blade. They'd both had cause to learn it well, over the past months. And all the years before.  
  
She took his hands, lying still at his sides, and brought both to her own mouth. Again, an oddly courtly gesture. She shook her head.  
  
"I'm sorry. I didn't mean that."  
  
"Clarice, in what way, exactly, in thought, or deed, or omission, do I give you the impression that I'm bored with you?"  
  
He heard the cold edge in his own voice, but was powerless to soften it.  
  
"Stop. Let's back up, okay? I am sorry."  
  
"But - "  
  
"No. No 'buts'. Just listen, a minute. There's nothing you do, or don't do, that gives me any such idea, and it was damn clumsy of me to say it, like that," holding his hands firmly, to keep his attention.  
  
"But I'm a clumsy gal. Just a 'rube' from the boonies, you pegged ME all right, eight years back. And sure. . . sometimes I do want hot dogs and beer and all that. So, what I have to ask myself, sometimes, is WHY the hell you're NOT bored with me? Can you understand that? Sometimes I feel like a plain old barnyard mutt, trying to run with the wolves."  
  
"I also told you, eight years ago, that you were anything but common; that you just had the fear of it. Will you never believe me?"  
  
"There's common, uncommon, and then there's nothing even remotely similar, before or since. You're in the third category. The might-as-well-be-from- Mars category. It can be intimidating. And I'm not talking about your case file."  
  
"A freak, in other words. Darling! You say the sweetest things!"  
  
"Oh, bullshit. You're not equipped to play dumb convincingly. You know perfectly well what I'm talking about."  
  
They locked gazes a moment, matching wills. He shook his imprisoned hands a bit, not too hard, just testing. Her grip remained steady.  
  
Finally, he smiled.  
  
"Hard work, isn't it?" he commented. He did not need to elaborate.  
  
"Rough magic," she agreed.  
  
"Perhaps I am a bit cranky," he conceded. "It is VERY early."  
  
"And you've barely touched the coffee I brought you. With my very own dainty white hands."  
  
He laughed. "And I never thanked you for it. Criminally remiss."  
  
"Yes," she said, and grinned, a big, daffy grin.  
  
"Yes, I was remiss? Or, yes, something else?"  
  
"Yes, sometimes I do miss the States. Yes, let's go see Margot and the baby. Yes, it'll be fun. Sex, drugs, and rock and roll! Cowabunga!"  
  
"Oh, I see. Yes, yes, and yes. Mmm. If only you could be this compliant more often."  
  
"Wish in one hand - "  
  
"No! Do not say that awful thing. Stop at once!"  
  
She giggled like a naughty child. Both enchanting and vexing, in equal measure. Rough magic, indeed.  
  
"So, stop me, baby," she said, and peremptorily made room for herself on the chaise by nudging sharply with her hip, knee and elbow. He was obliged to move over, if he did not wish to be poked further. But he didn't mind so much, were the truth to be known.  
  
He waited until she was comfortably nestled in, and close enough to rub noses with.  
  
"Well, that's settled, then. We'll attend. I'll go start making the arrangements right now."  
  
He sat up abruptly, eliciting another gratifying annoyed grimace from Clarice, and, incidentally, bumping her halfway off the narrow chaise.  
  
But not quite breaking her grip on his shoulder and arm. When playing games, it's very important to leave your opponent some options to exercise, lest the game end too soon.  
  
"Just a darn minute," she growled, gripping, pulling. Hard, too. "'Make the arrangements later."  
  
"When, later?" he asked, trying very hard not to smile. Her eyes were sparkling, a coral flush had risen in her cheeks.  
  
He turned and seized her arm, then, and with three quick, counter-balanced moves, had succeeded in flipping her onto her back. From there it was a simple matter to pin her to the chaise with about half of his weight. Not that her struggles to escape seemed a hundred percent in earnest. A quick kiss on her nose, mostly because he couldn't resist, and then ear- whispering range again.  
  
"When, later?" he repeated, lips brushing her ear. "Ten minutes later? An hour later?"  
  
No answer. Just giggling and wriggling. That wouldn't do.  
  
"Two hours later? Three? Talk, or suffer the consequences . . . "  
  
He had already put quite a few of the consequences in motion before she bothered to talk. Perhaps he was taking the wrong approach. If forced confession was his goal, that was. Alternate goals presented themselves to his thought. And it would take three hours, at least, possibly four or five, to realize them all.  
  
"What's the hurry?" she asked, and her voice held that uniquely feminine husky quality that plugs directly into certain receptors in the male brain. "Make the arrangements . . . oh, make 'em tomorrow, how's that?"  
  
"Suitable," he replied, voice slightly muffled. "I don't really like this sweatshirt, Clarice, have I told you that?"  
  
"Often," she said. "Want me to take it off?"  
  
"Yes, eventually. And then later we can burn it."  
  
More giggling, more wriggling. Perfection. Even if it WAS very early.  
  
There were always compensations . . .  
  
It was not until several hours later that either one of them thought to wonder just exactly where, in the United States, Margot's christening party was to be held. But it seemed a moot point, then. They'd placed an ad in the Tattler to RSVP the invitation, and to give Margot a mail drop for the specifics, on the following day, without giving the matter further consideration.  
  
A lapse in caution on their part, that, in time, they would both have cause to regret.  
  
************************************************************* 


	2. Chapter Two

The Lost Wages of Sin - Chapter Two  
  
Chapter Two  
  
A week later, Dr. Hannibal Lecter was in the spacious kitchen of the mansion, trembling with fury at his seat at the kitchen table.  
  
It was early afternoon, not long after lunch. He had been monitoring the progress of a complicated chicken stock he was fashioning, and had been looking through his mail at the same time. A note from Margot Verger lay on the tiled tabletop, dropped there from nerveless fingers a moment before as though it were a handful of maggots.  
  
Two of the servants, one housekeeper and one maid, huddled in a corner of the lovely room and tried not to make any noise. They did nothing that might attract the attention of the man they knew as "el Doctor Griffin" at all. They had never before seen their employer in such a state, and they never wanted to see anything like it again.  
  
"That BITCH!" Dr. Lecter cried in English, infuriated. "I'll kill her!"  
  
Clarice, who'd been fussing with some of the avocado plants she'd been trying to grow in the kitchen garden, just outside, heard this exclamation and came running in through the patio doors. She had not often heard this tone from her normally controlled beloved, and knew instantly that something was seriously wrong. Besides, when Hannibal Lecter said he was going to kill someone, it was unwise to take it as a mere figure of speech.  
  
When she saw him, he had gone stark white, his dark red eyes were on fire, and he looked very much like a small but cosmically pissed-off goblin that had somehow gotten into the kitchen.  
  
"What?" she said, moving to his side and putting a hand on his shoulder at once, hoping to calm him. "What's wrong?"  
  
"What's wrong?" he raved. "What's wrong!!?? I'll show you! Read THAT!"  
  
She could feel his coiled shaking under her hand. Not a good sign at all. He pointed at Margot's note on the table the same way someone else might have pointed at a bucket of raw sewage.  
  
Clarice didn't even look at the note. First things first.  
  
"Hannibal, calm down. You're scaring the help."  
  
Her use of his given name, something she rarely did, even after a year, helped to penetrate his enraged fog, and he glanced at the two women cowering in the corner.  
  
"Maldiciones. Estoy apesadumbrado, senoras," he hissed at the two, in a largely ineffectual effort to lessen their terror. "Excuseme. Acabo de tener ciertas malas noticias. Noticias horrorosas."  
  
Clarice could see that his hissed apologies were not having the desired effect. If anything, they were making the situation worse. She left Dr. Lecter's side and gently shepherded the two women out of the kitchen, murmuring softly to both in pretty good college Spanish.  
  
When she returned, some ten minutes later, she was relieved to see that Dr. Lecter had regained some control over himself. His face was still an odd ash-white, and his eyes were still glowing balefully, but at least he'd stopped trembling.  
  
"Now you've done it," Clarice said quietly. "They both gave notice. And they both lit out for the local church just now, to go light candles. What could possibly be so bad?"  
  
"Read the note," he growled, voice like an arctic wind.  
  
Clarice came to the table and took up Margot's note. Her eyes widened progressively as she read. Once she had finished the short missive, she read it through one more time, just to make certain there had been no mistake.  
  
She gazed at Dr. Lecter, face frozen.  
  
He gazed back. Silently daring her to comment.  
  
It was too much. Her whole face slowly crumpled, and then she was laughing so hard she had to sit down.  
  
"I'm. So. Glad. You. Find. This. Amusing," he ground out, through his sharp white teeth.  
  
Which only made Clarice Starling fairly howl with laughter.  
  
When she'd regained enough breath to talk, she asked brightly "Ever been before?"  
  
"Are you mad? I'd rather be steamed to death in kettle full of live rats."  
  
"You wanted to have some fun," she argued, trying internally to stave off a new outburst of laughter. "It is the vacation capital of the United States."  
  
"We don't HAVE to go, anyway," she added, mildly, ignoring the twin laser beams that were currently aimed at her head. "We can make some excuse."  
  
She knew perfectly well that they'd already sent their RSVP, and that Dr. Lecter could no more renege on a social engagement once he'd agreed to attend than he could strike a match on a wet bar of soap. She had to admire Margot's tactics.  
  
And she wasn't above needling her generally invulnerable SO a bit. It wasn't often that the joke was on him.  
  
"I take it YOU have some familiarity with the ghastly place?" he asked, biting each word off, like chewing on ice. "Is there ANY remotely habitable accommodation to be found?"  
  
"Oh, sure," she answered cheerfully. "Plenty. And we'll be going in the off- season, too. Bargain rates!"  
  
He glared at her for a moment, then gave it up. Margot Verger had outfoxed him, and he knew it. He dropped his head into his hands and just moaned.  
  
My poor fugitive monster, she thought, pity warring with glee within her. How will he ever survive?  
  
*************************************************************** 


	3. Chapter Three

The Lost Wages of Sin - Chapter Three  
  
Chapter Three  
  
Travel for Clarice Starling and Hannibal Lecter was a complex affair. They couldn't just call a travel agent.  
  
First, there were papers and identification and passports to forge. Although Dr. Lecter had several excellent alternate identities squirreled away for a rainy day, he never used any of them just for crossing borders. They were each too entrenched, and had taken too long to craft, to be risked on merely temporary use.  
  
So the proper traveling documents had to be either made or bought. This took time, and when it was done, he would be traveling to the New World as Lawrence Perkins, computer programmer, and she would be Norma Meyer, administrative assistant. Good, boring, prosaic identities.  
  
Then, there was the matter of weapons. One couldn't just slip a Harpy or Syderco Civilian through customs, or pass any of the firearms Clarice preferred through airport metal detectors. But neither Starling or Lecter ever went anywhere unarmed if they could possibly help it.  
  
Therefore, arrangements had to be made to purchase the desired items by proxy, and to have them delivered to various safety deposit boxes at their destination. This involved a careful concert of phone calls, cryptic letters, exorbitant payments, and shady dealings with a number of unsavory characters stateside.  
  
Finally, disguises had to be devised. Although Dr. Lecter's Most Wanted photo was currently one face back, they would both have to run a gamut of airport security cameras, customs agents, and assorted security personnel in the course of their journey. Starling, of course, was not on any wanted list, but her face, thanks to the tabloids, was not entirely unknown to the public, and they wanted to preserve the illusion that she was deceased. The best thing was to make themselves as unrecognizable and as inconspicuous as possible for the trip, and to join some tour group to travel with.  
  
Finding a tour group was easy. Theirs was a popular destination. For this, they actually could call a travel agent, and that is exactly what they did.  
  
Fashioning alternative appearances was a bit more difficult, and they both behaved as though it was a great nuisance, but the truth was, the disguises were the fun part, and they both threw themselves into the game wholeheartedly.  
  
Clarice went drab. She dulled the fiery embers of her red-gold hair with a temporary mouse brown rinse, and found a pair of horn rimmed specs at a second hand shop.  
  
She also combed the tackiest clothing stores she could find, purchased a suitcase worth of graceless clothes, and found a hideous tan polyester pant suit, a Ship & Shore floral blouse in lavender and lime green, and a pair of "sensible" Dr. Scholls loafers to travel in.  
  
A trip to a theatrical costume supply company provided realistic padding for her hips and derriere, and a binding bra for her bosom.  
  
Make-up to cover the spot on her cheek and hairstyle adjustments completed the picture. The total effect was marvelous. She looked like a plain, beaten-down prisoner of pink collar wage slavery whose spirit had been narrowed by mind-numbing boredom, and whose ass had been widened by too many hours spent sitting at a desk.  
  
When she donned her costume for Dr. Lecter's consideration, he'd seemed genuinely impressed by her resource. And he'd given her a small congratulation gift the following day to complete her ensemble: a vintage set of add-a-beads. Clarice immediately vowed revenge, even if they were the perfect touch.  
  
He himself had been mysterious about what he was planning. Clarice noticed that he had started skipping his regular sessions with his barber as soon as they'd accepted Margot's invitation. He also began to study various internet clothing outlets, and once she'd found a Banana Republic catalogue folded on the bureau in his dressing room/walk-in closet. As the time passed and their departure date grew near, various packages began to arrive in the mail, and she knew he'd overturned his long-standing policy of blanket contempt for all medical practitioners and deigned to consult an optometrist.  
  
By the time his hair had grown out enough to spill over his collar, he was ready to present the fake persona he'd been developing for Clarice's approval.  
  
She sat on the bed in the airy top floor bedroom they shared and waited for the unveiling.  
  
It was astonishing. One man went in to Dr. Lecter's dressing room, and then another man came out.  
  
He wore rumpled khaki and socially conscious chambray in layers, and an absurd khaki vest with what appeared to be at least forty pockets of no discernible practical function. An AIDS awareness ribbon adorned this vest, pinned beside an old "Nader for President" campaign button.  
  
The shaggy hairstyle of a man who would desperately like to be younger than he is obscured Dr. Lecter's ears, both adding to the overall characterization, and neatly preventing any potential identification via these distinctive features. Shoes that looked like ordinary Nikes, but could not have been, added at least two inches to Dr. Lecter's natural height. Gold rimmed glasses that tended to slip partially hid the shape of his nose, and a set of contact lenses changed his dark, strange eyes to a pale, innocuous blue.  
  
"Well?" he asked, as he adopted an uncharacteristic round-shouldered slouch to set off the sloppy attire. "How do I look?"  
  
"Who are you?" Clarice demanded in reply. "And what have you done with Dr. Lecter?"  
  
"Hmm. I left him in the closet," he answered, pleased. He admired himself in the pier glass she'd given him as a birthday present, some months before.  
  
"Serves him right, too. A remarkably disagreeable person. I'm Lawrence Perkins, by the way. It says so on my passport. But you can call me Larry."  
  
Clarice laughed. "Well, Larry, I gotta tell you, you look like a vegetarian."  
  
"Yes? Do I?" asked "Larry", with a very un-PC malevolent chuckle. "Like a bleeding heart, lactose intolerant, cause-obsessed, granola-eating, Volvo- driving, mid-life crisis twit? Personally, I think I look good and . . . stupid. What's your opinion?"  
  
She grinned. "Well, I wouldn't go that far. But you do look . . . harmless. Really, it's an amazing transformation."  
  
"Thank you, Clarice," he said, and sat down on the bed next to her. He sighed. "We leave in a week. Everything is more or less in order. Ugh."  
  
"It won't be so bad," she answered. "There are some good things. Everything is open twenty-four hours, from the grocery stores to the dry cleaners. You'll like that."  
  
"The very apogee of quintessential tackiness, twenty-four/seven. All ghastly, all the time. Wonderful."  
  
He sighed again and curled up and rested his head in her lap, a habit he'd taken to about six months back. Clarice was never sure if he did it because he liked to, or if he was riffing on unicorn/maiden mythology. Or both.  
  
She petted his fearful, newly shaggy head, offering some comfort. What vast, strange worlds this single fragile vessel of bone contained.  
  
Mine to run with, she thought, with a surge of fierce, possessive pleasure, more than she had any ethical right to feel. Mine to play with, mine to know. Mine to love. Won fairly, through many diverse labors. I, the mighty huntress, have captured the fell beast, sire. I lay my sword and shield at your feet. I will quest no more.  
  
"'And hast thou slain the jabberwock?'" the rara avis in her lap quoted, softly.  
  
He always knew what she was thinking. Somehow. Perhaps he picked it up through osmosis, through the pores in his skin.  
  
We don't deserve such happiness, she thought. We haven't earned it, either of us. Rightly, we both need a swift kick in the ass.  
  
And at least one of us is about to get one, in a week's time, she added mentally. He'd be virtually impossible to live with, throughout the trip, she was certain. A boot in the booty for her too. Perhaps there was some justice in the world.  
  
She laughed. "Hey, Larry," she asked. "Wanna cheat on that guy in the closet?"  
  
"Uh . . . are you serious? He'd kill us both!"  
  
"Larry" sat up, a playful approximation of utter thickness on his face, mild blue eyes blinking stupidly.  
  
"He doesn't have to know," Clarice stage-whispered in his ear with comical prurience.  
  
"Larry" hesitantly took her in his arms and kissed her. Badly.  
  
"Are you sure it's okay? What if he finds out?" he asked, a timid whine in his voice. "I'm not good with . . . you know . . . being self-assertive and confrontations and things like that."  
  
He managed to look lustful and fearful and clueless, all at the same time.  
  
"Nothing ventured, nothing gained," Clarice said to the faux wimp before her. "Give us another smooch, Larry. Don't be a chicken."  
  
One more inept kiss, and then a voice in her ear. Dr. Lecter's normal, deeply perverse voice.  
  
"Go get into your own traveling persona, please, Clarice," he suggested, whispering, tempting her with feathery touches of his tongue as he spoke. "Show me 'Norma'. And I'll fuck that homely little secretary's brains out. I'd like that. What do you think?"  
  
Ah, a new wicked game. His invention knew no bounds.  
  
And that is how Larry and Norma, as normal and conventional a couple as could be imagined, came to be having uninspired (but divinely amusing) sex in the very same bed that was normally occupied by a renegade FBI agent who was presumed to be dead, and a mad former psychiatrist who had once single- handedly kept tabloid rags like the "Tattler" in business.  
  
The evening was a great success. 


	4. Chapter Four

Chapter Four  
  
McCarran International Airport, Hertz Desk: October, 1998  
  
"I specifically requested a full-sized car," Lawrence Perkins was saying to the Hertz representative behind the counter. "I reserved such a vehicle three weeks in advance."  
  
Perkin's tone had a cold and lethal edge to it that was very much at odds with his mild appearance. The clerk felt a strange impulse to shiver, momentarily, then recovered her usual oblivious customer service facade. She'd been yelled at by worse than this wimpy looking jerk, in the course of her career.  
  
"I AM sorry, sir," she repeated, for the fourth or fifth time. "But there's three conventions in town and it's Friday night. All we have left are the compacts. Hertz will gladly give you a partial refund, of course. Or a full refund, if you decide you don't want the car at all."  
  
A veiled threat. No mistaking that. Accept this outrageous breach of professional ethics on our part - or walk. Or grab a taxi, if you can.  
  
Dr. Lecter was at an impasse. He could not follow any of the courses of action that immediately came to mind. He could not accomplish anything by further argument. He could not accomplish anything by bribery or by manipulation. He did not intend to spend a full week in this benighted hell- hole of a city without a car of some kind. And he could not leap over the counter and savage the clerk without attracting attention.  
  
He wondered how she'd look without a nose for a moment, and just how she'd go about saying "I AM sorry, sir" over and over again if her tongue were gone. And then he bit the bullet and signed the rental contract. He had not expected this trip to be anything less than all the tortures of Hell combined, from start to finish, and there was some bitter pleasure in having ALL of his expectations confirmed so early on in the ordeal.  
  
Oh, Margot, darling, he thought as he accepted the keys to his rental for the week, what wonderful surprises I have in store for YOU . . .  
  
He left the Hertz counter and began to make his way to the baggage claim, to meet Clarice. To meet "Norma", rather, he mentally corrected himself, and readjusted his posture to the defeated slump he'd chosen for the persona of "Larry". There were cameras everywhere. It would be best not to forget that.  
  
Impressions came to him. Scents of industrial carpet cleaner, many bodies in varying degrees of cleanliness, stale cigarette smoke on dry air, a hot metallic whiff of money and greed and desperation.  
  
The clanking, ringing, almost musical, yet maddeningly off-key trilling of slot machines. A thousand different conversations, and the muted droning of the aircraft outside these walls. Announcements of flights boarding and flights departing. An almost imperceptible low frequency hum, the ambient signature of all large interiors.  
  
People. Arrivals wearing expectant, half sheepish smiles, bent on temporary tosses with homogenized sin and mass-marketed iniquity. Departures wearing the dazed, flat expressions of flounders in the fishmonger's case, pounded into dead affect by systematic excess. Many of the very aged, few of the very young. Stridently colorful clothing everywhere, much metallic gold and silver, tacky talismans . . . for luck, always for luck.  
  
Lady Luck. The rhinestone encrusted, tormenting whore-goddess of the city. Cheap as dirt, elusive as air. A thousand different forms of worship in Her name, a thousand sacrifices large and small to Her glory, twenty-four hours a day, every day. Amen.  
  
I'm in a foreign domain, he thought. My rites are not Her rites. Blood means nothing to Her, evil is immaterial. The rule of the random occurrence. Please place your bets . . .  
  
Are we off to a poor start, Lady, you and I? I could have done without the car business. Clarice will NOT be pleased.  
  
Lawrence Perkins/Hannibal Lecter walked on to the baggage check. He saw Clarice struggling with one of their bags at a crowded carousel, bent over at an awkward angle, artificially augmented rump in the air. There was another large bag already beside her. He noticed that she was muttering, when he caught a glimpse of her face.  
  
Cursing, I expect, he thought, and smiled. Wait until she sees our car! Then we'll hear some creative language. I wonder if she'd like to drive?  
  
He strode forward and reached for the heavy bag that was eluding Clarice. He caught the handle before it could roll past.  
  
"Hi, Norma," Larry said, pulling the bag off the car. "Gosh, that's a heavy one. What'd you pack in here?"  
  
He bent a little closer to "Norma" and spoke a private word in her ear "Heavy as a body, Clarice. Is there something you haven't told me? And why didn't you wait for me to help you with this luggage?"  
  
"You were taking too long," she answered curtly. "Any problems? Get the car?"  
  
"That depends. Define 'problems'," he said, and showed her the keys.  
  
"Oh, wow. I don't like the sound of that."  
  
He picked up the two bags and declined to comment. They walked through the glass doors that fronted the baggage area and out into the open Nevada air.  
  
Dr. Lecter was pleasantly surprised. The air was fresh, a crisp fall current in it, dry, but marvelously clear. He could see a range of grey- blue mountains far to the west, the sun setting on them in vivid hues. The stark and compelling sunset of the high desert. Blue and gold and salmon and magenta and scarlet and more. Beautiful.  
  
Always compensations. Even here. Thank you, Lady Luck. Perhaps we can be friends after all.  
  
They went to the Hertz shuttle and surrendered their bags, then climbed aboard the small bus that would take them to their car.  
  
The flight had been long and dull. They had chosen separate seats, reasoning that it might be better not to be observed, side by side, for hours at a stretch. No one on the plane had paid either of them the slightest attention, however, and the hours of separate boredom had taken a toll on them both.  
  
But it was safe enough to be seen together now. It was a short trip, and they "matched", in a way. Both sank onto a bench seat in the back of the minibus with tired appreciation.  
  
"Are you gonna make it? " Clarice whispered to Dr. Lecter as the small bus pulled away from the terminal curb. "Now that we're really here? Or are you just going to croak?"  
  
"So far, I'm holding up surprisingly well, and thank you so much for your tender concern, my love. I'll demonstrate my gratitude at some later opportunity, do be assured. Very soon, perhaps."  
  
He jingled the rental car keys cryptically as they pulled into the Hertz pick-up lot, and then pressed them into her palm.  
  
Only two vehicles remained in this lot. One was a candy-apple red Ford Aspire. The other was a violet-blue Aspire hatchback.  
  
"Ah," Dr. Lecter said. "Our auto. Limited choices, I'm afraid, but I thought you'd prefer the hatchback. If you don't care to drive it, I believe that between us we could probably CARRY it to the hotel."  
  
"Moose-fucking-SHIT!" Clarice exclaimed, startling the driver of the shuttle and causing Dr. Lecter to laugh out loud.  
  
If HE was going to suffer, he didn't see any good reason why his companion shouldn't suffer as well.  
  
"Now, now. It gets excellent gas mileage, I'm told," he argued.  
  
They disembarked from the shuttle and Lecter collected their bags, then they strolled over to the vividly colored little car.  
  
"Three conventions in town on a Friday night," Dr. Lecter explained to Clarice, who was staring at the compact as though it were some particularly repellent insect. "So the Hertz clerk told me. Repeatedly. Other rental agencies were equally unhelpful. This is it. Would you open the hatch for me, please, Clarice?"  
  
She shrugged and unlocked the narrow cargo space at the rear of the car. "All the performance of a motorized roller skate, all the pickup of a dead dog," she summarized. "Great. Love the color too. I suppose you're going to make ME drive?"  
  
He was busy trying to angle two standard sized suitcases into the space allotted, an absorbing problem in applied geometry.  
  
"Hmm? Oh, yes, I'd appreciate it if you would."  
  
"Mm-hmm. I thought so."  
  
She unlocked the driver's side and squeezed in behind the dinner plate sized wheel, and reached over to unlock the passenger door. After a moment, Dr. Lecter got into the cramped interior.  
  
"You know, " he remarked, adjusting his seat position controls to make room for his legs. "Although, on the whole, I've always been reasonably satisfied with myself, I confess that I have occasionally wished I was a little taller. Until now."  
  
"Small favors," Clarice quipped.  
  
"How clever. How very amusing, Clarice, really. Can we get this over with now? Or do you need to consult a map?"  
  
"Nope. Let's saddle up. First, the lockboxes, then the Four Seasons, south end of the strip. A mile or so from here. We should probably get there in a couple of hours, in this heap. What about your seat belt?"  
  
"No, I think I'll keep my options open. I may ask you to throw on the brakes at high speed at some point during the trip."  
  
She laughed and pulled out of the parking lot, and threaded her way out of the airport. East on Sunset, right on Las Vegas Boulevard, headed north. The fabled Las Vegas "strip" opened before them like a river, a garish, glittering channel of light and noise and Friday evening traffic. The famous "Welcome to Las Vegas" sign loomed up on their right like a malevolent explosion of neon in the darkening evening.  
  
Dr. Lecter groaned.  
  
"Kill me now, Clarice. Please."  
  
"Not now, sweetie. We need to get our things from the lock boxes. "Mailboxes Etc.", 1200 Paradise Road. Shouldn't be far. After I'm armed, I promise I'll shoot you, okay?"  
  
But he was gazing, both repelled and fascinated, at the most consummately hideous cityscape he had ever seen in his life, and did not immediately answer her.  
  
He had to admit to himself, whatever was definitive had always interested him. The worst, the best, the finest, the ugliest, the least, the most. And this "strip" was all of that. The most use of excessive display. The least use of any recognizable aesthetic principle.  
  
Profligate waste of energy, provided in cheap abundance, so he had read, by the nearby Hoover dam. Glaring light in every hue, bubble-gum pink and canary yellow and radioactive green and corpse-light blue. Neon twining to the horizon, like a disorderly parade of glowing, multicolored, gaseous snakes. Red taillights pulsing in the bumper-to-bumper traffic ahead, white headlights flashing from the equally heavy traffic going in the opposite direction. The very stars above dimmed in the clear desert night by the riot of man-made illumination below.  
  
An enormous black pyramid across the way to their left, hulking in the dark, emitting a beam of light from its apex at intervals, so bright it must surely interfere with the navigation of small aircraft. Then an immense fairy tale castle, or rather, a somewhat unimaginative child's conception of such a castle, just past the pyramid. To the right, an antiseptic version of a Jamaican village amid a small, manicured jungle, a counterfeit Easter Island head lowering at the corner. Then a blue lit high- rise/pagoda hybrid, almost directly across the way from half scale reproduction of the Statue of Liberty and Manhattan skyline. In the distance, an abysmally ugly concrete tower reared up above all, fifties "atomic" architecture, topped by, of all things, a roller coaster. And a medium sized volcano, it seemed, was currently erupting down the street, perhaps spilling flows of super heated lava directly onto the flow of traffic that thronged this jumbled boulevard of American dreams.  
  
It was madness made manifest. The architecture of insanity, bathed in artificial light, pitched like a Bedouin tent in a barren stretch of empty desert. Nothing in this bizarre vista bore even a passing connection to any known reality. Only the real night sky over all, stars dimmed by the artifice and insane arrogance and unending yearning of human beings.  
  
Aside from the unmitigated tackiness and the aggressive vulgarity, there was something compelling in it. A kind of twisted gallantry, perhaps, or a brutal honesty. A glittering monument to sin, once the deranged dream of a dead gangster, now raised to the level of mass cultural demonstration, powered by twin engines of greed and need.  
  
Dr. Lecter was no stranger to extremes. There was something here that, in a peculiar way, he could relate to. He was not entirely displeased.  
  
And he would watch faces here, he thought, with an odd sort of revolted anticipation. That would prove instructive indeed.  
  
Clarice broke into his reverie with a question.  
  
"What do you think? Is it as bad as you thought?" she asked.  
  
"Worse," he answered, after a moment. "Far worse than I imagined. So much so, in fact, that it almost achieves a kind of terrible appeal. There's more here than just tackiness, anyway. This level of ugliness is almost epic. And it's certainly not boring. I begin to see why Margot might have wanted to live here. All this would appeal to her sense of humor. Not that she won't have to pay, you understand."  
  
"Oh, of course. So you don't still want me to shoot you like I promised?" she asked, and took his hand.  
  
"Well, maybe not just yet. And I know you were only saying that, incidentally. A false promise. For shame, Clarice. Do I ever tell you stories?"  
  
"No, you never do," she answered quietly, as she turned right onto Flamingo and drove east.  
  
After a few more blocks, they found the Mailboxes Etc. Clarice had mentioned earlier. Here they retrieved three nondescript brown paper wrapped packages from rented mailboxes. These packages, though uninteresting to look at, had the welcome property of making them both feel a bit more relaxed once they had them safely stowed in the tiny car.  
  
This important errand done, Clarice turned the car around and retraced their route, back to the far southern end of the strip, past Mandalay Bay and to the Four Seasons. It was the only resort in all of Las Vegas that did not contain a casino, and was the only one that had been awarded a four star rating. Only 487 guest rooms, a small fraction of the thousands-plus numbers boasted by all the other monstrously oversized accommodations.  
  
Clarice had chosen this particular hotel herself, hoping to make him feel as comfortable as might be, given that she expected him to be very much a fish out of water throughout their stay. Also, since there was no casino, there would be far fewer hidden security cameras at this hotel. An excellent deduction. He admired her cleverness greatly. She had the makings of a first class criminal hidden somewhere in her righteous psyche.  
  
The lobby bore out her selection, and he was satisfied. Tasteful earth tone color palette, soft lighting, decent antiques, well trained staff. The captain and valets at the entrance had been too professional to sneer at their fiercely blue economy car, the bellman that had taken charge of their bags had been polite, and the desk staff had been kind and courteous to Norma and Larry, rumpled and ordinary as they appeared to be. This was clearly not a place that worshipped the high roller and snubbed the paying guest.  
  
In the trip up to their suite in the elevator, Larry put his lips to Norma's ear and whispered in Dr. Lecter's voice.  
  
"Thank you, Clarice. A civilized choice. I may live out the week after all."  
  
The suite was lovely. The decor was faultless, the size comfortable, the amenities acceptable. There was a sitting room, a bedroom, a spacious, well equipped bathroom, and a nice sized balcony that overlooked an inner courtyard, rather than the glowing chaos outside the hotel walls. A suitable refuge.  
  
Larry surprised the bellman with a considerable tip, and at last they were alone. Dr. Lecter immediately went to the phone beside a pleasant overstuffed sofa and sat down to make a call.  
  
Clarice started to unpack some of their things as she listened.  
  
"Hello, is this Margot Verger?" he asked, in a voice that even Clarice did not recognize, judging by her startled reaction.  
  
"Oh, yes? May I speak to her then? . . . no, it's a personal matter . . . yes, that's right . . . yes, thank you, I'll hold . . . Ms. Verger? Yes, so sorry to call after business hours, this is Herman Eggers? Clark County Child Welfare? . . . yes, that's right, Ms. Verger, Child Welfare Division . . . well, I'm afraid we've had a complaint . . . no, no, but both abuse AND neglect have been mentioned . . . well, we have to . . . please, Ms. Verger, there's no need for that kind of language . . . may I ask, how old is your son? And what was his name, again, I don't have the case file in front of me . . . Michael? Michael Verger? No middle name? . . . oh, Hannibal? . . . really? Unusual name, one doesn't often hear it . . . but a very NICE name, still . . . any particular significance . . . hello? . . . no, I told you, this is Herman EGGERS . . . Eggers, Margot, dear, Eggers, as in 'ham-and-egger'."  
  
He held the phone out with a nasty vindicated chuckle as Margot Verger's voice raved tinnily from the receiver.  
  
Once she'd calmed herself enough to stop screaming, he resumed the conversation.  
  
"Yes, we just arrived. I wanted to let you know. And to thank you again, Margot, for your kind, if somewhat misleading, invitation . . .hmm? Oh, Four Seasons . . . You're in Summerlin? No, I don't, but we'll find it . . . Sunday? . . . yes, of course . . . ceremony at four, your home at six . . . yes, I'd very much like for you to send a car . . . no, Margot, we are certainly NOT even . . . oh, probably never . . . yes, all right, see you then, I'm looking forward to it . . . yes, certainly . . . good night, Margot."  
  
"You are a fiend," Clarice commented.  
  
"I am justified," he declared, smiling. He bent his head toward his open palm and removed the blue lenses from his eyes. Ah. It was good to get them out.  
  
"These hurt, in this dry climate, " he commented absently. The fragile blue disks went into a case he'd retrieved from one of his many vest pockets. "I'm tired of being Larry, anyway. He's the dullest alter-ego I've ever devised. What possessed me?"  
  
"I'm just plain tired," Clarice declared, and rolled her head in an effort to work some of the kinks out of her neck. "What a trip. I need to get out of all this padded underwear. Do you mind if I shower first?"  
  
"Certainly I mind. You'd have invited that great bore Larry to join you. Don't imagine I don't know what's going on. Why are you doing that with your head? Is your neck stiff?"  
  
She turned away from him and started toward the bathroom, adding an amusing exaggerated sway to her padded hips as she walked.  
  
"I'm stiff all over," she breathed, and disappeared past the bathroom door.  
  
The sound of water running followed. A few moments later she called out again, voice muffled by the patter of the running water. "Shower's huge. We could fit that goddamned Aspire in here, and still have room for a barn dance. Plenty of room to share. But if you send that Larry in here after me, I really will shoot you. I'm tired of him too."  
  
Dr. Lecter really was very tempted to resurrect Larry just out of spite. He hated to let an ultimatum go by unanswered. On the other hand, he really was very tired of being Lawrence Perkins, and the thought of warm water and soap and delicate fragrances and Clarice's stiff neck and the fine down on the small of her back seemed far more tempting at that moment than any bloody-minded contrariness could be.  
  
He could be contrary on Sunday. At Margot's . . .  
  
He could be cooperative now. He knew of some interesting ways to relieve a stiff neck.  
  
He had survived his first day in Las Vegas. Only six more days remained. Surely that warranted some small celebration?  
  
Dr. Lecter thought it did. He left the couch and wandered into the steamy bathroom.  
  
*************************************************************** 


	5. Chapter Five

Chapter Five  
  
The following morning, Clarice, as usual, awakened first.  
  
In the course of their small scale celebration the previous evening, they'd left the bedroom shades undrawn, and the windows slightly ajar. There was a mild breeze flicking the curtains. Early morning desert sun had invaded the room, and cast beams of light in harsh bars across the bed.  
  
She looked at her companion, just for a moment. She wanted to visit the hotel gym, and afterwards, take a few laps in the pool, maybe catch some rays. She knew she'd never get out of the room without awakening him, no matter how quiet she was. He slept so lightly, even a moment or two of close scrutiny was enough to rouse him from slumber.  
  
But she looked anyway. A beam of light from the window had fallen across the top of his dark head, drawing reflective sparks from his hair, illuminating one side of his face, casting the rest into deep shadow. Asleep, with that measureless, labyrinthine consciousness elsewhere and the acute, penetrating eyes safely shuttered, he looked almost fragile. Delicate bones, fair skin, black eyelashes against pale cheeks, one slender hand open on the pillow, palm up. She could almost see the small, vulnerable boy he had been, once, buried somewhere in the adult predator's sleeping visage.  
  
She had heard that child's voice, on more than one occasion, suddenly screaming in the night. It had taken him months to allow her to touch him on these occasions, when he'd awaken with the image of the lost Mischa etched behind his eyes and burning like acid in his heart. He was not used to comfort. He was unaccustomed to kindness. He'd had to work to accept such unhoped-for gifts.  
  
Eventually, though, he had accepted, gratefully. He had determined that the warmth of her touch and sound of her voice could provide an irrefutable disjunction between the anguish of the past and the frail happiness of the present. Phantoms haunted him, indeed, haunted them both. But she was real. He could prove it to himself, through touch, through scent, through sight, as often and as fully as he needed to.  
  
But nothing had come easy. Not one single thing. They'd both had to struggle to learn how not to be alone.  
  
And we've done an amazingly good job so far, all things considered, she decided mentally, with a small smile. Stone the crows. Who'd have thought?  
  
"Are you staring at me, Clarice?" he asked, eyes wide open, clearly fixed on her, fully awake. "Why?"  
  
There was no sleepy transitional state for him, she'd learned. He was either completely absent, or completely present. Nothing in between. And if you looked at him too long, he'd wake up. It was damned disconcerting.  
  
"I was trying to decide if you're real. Sorry if I was staring too loud."  
  
He smiled, and stretched like a cat does, from head to toe. "What conclusion have you arrived at?"  
  
"Not quite sure, yet," she said. "I think you might just be a figment of someone's imagination. Like a myth, or some dark fable. I'll have to investigate further."  
  
She leaned over and kissed his cheek, then both eyes, and finally his mouth. She was nothing if not a thorough investigator. All warm, solid flesh. Responsive, and anchored firmly in the moment.  
  
"What's the verdict now?" he asked, when she'd finished. "You really must tell me, you know. I sometimes have doubts myself."  
  
"I can understand that. Now I'm not sure if I'M real."  
  
He laughed and raised himself on one elbow, the better to look directly into her face.  
  
"Perhaps you're not. Perhaps all this, all these years, everything that's happened, is all some complicated hallucination. Maybe Chilton's got me in the electroshock therapy room right now and has finally succeeded in frying my brain. God knows he threatened to do it often enough."  
  
"Ugh. Don't even say that! You're giving me the creeps."  
  
"If that IS it, there would be one good thing, though . . . " he went on, as though she hadn't spoken.  
  
"What?" she asked reluctantly, powerless not to.  
  
"I wouldn't really be in Las Vegas."  
  
She barked a slightly horrified laugh and got out of bed.  
  
"That's it. I'm hitting the gym," she said, rummaging through her suitcase to find a bathing suit and some sweats. "God, what a colossal pain in the ass you are. Why do I put up with you?"  
  
"Because . . . I make you laugh?" he suggested, and watched with a disapproving eye as she covered the sleek black maillot he'd given her as a gift before the trip with her usual drab and functional sweats. AND left the amber necklace and silk pareo he'd added to the gift behind.  
  
"Because you plan to steal all my recipes and write a best-selling cook book?" he suggested further. "Because I once gave you a severed head in a classic car as a Valentine's present? Because I won't permit your enemies to live? Because I'm the 'fuck of the century'?"  
  
She gave the matter some mock thought, scratching her head in elaborate puzzlement.  
  
"Naw, none of those things . . . "  
  
"Because you desperately need a fashion consultant?"  
  
"I'm outta here," she declared, and stepped briskly to the door of the bedroom.  
  
"I'll be back around nine. Then, after breakfast, we can go sight-seeing," she added maliciously.  
  
He retreated back into the blankets and pillows at once.  
  
"What a delightful prospect," he said, burrowing deeper into the bedclothes. "I shall count the minutes."  
  
Several hours later, after breakfast, they did go out. Clarice was well aware that for all of Dr. Lecter's sardonic complaints, he really was very curious about this strange city, just as he was very curious about everything else in the universe. She was determined to show him as much as she could, and, incidentally, to provide him with a ready excuse to indulge his native inquisitiveness without forfeiting his native snobbery.  
  
What were friends for? She could play the indefatigable tourist and drag him everywhere. Besides, his somewhat skewed perceptions were always interesting, always surprising. She looked forward to discovering what he'd make of the Liberace Museum, for instance. It would be fun. And it would help to take her mind off the growing sense of nervousness she'd been battling ever since they'd arrived in this vacation Mecca.  
  
So, they ventured forth at about eleven o'clock, having mutually agreed in advance that the Aspire, and Larry and Norma as well, could probably be left behind for this day without undue risk. Clarice simply covered her hair with a silk scarf, covered her eyes with some sunglasses, and covered the spot on her cheek with some concealer. Dr. Lecter obscured his own altered face with sunglasses and a hat. Only a very intent examination would have identified either of them, and they did not expect to attract such close attention while hidden among the huge mob of weekend visitors to Vegas.  
  
The omnipresent taxis of the strip whisked them to and fro, and neither of them missed their little blue rental a bit.  
  
They saw a man-made beach complete with surf and sunburned bathers at Mandalay Bay, adjacent to their own hotel, and enough Balinese decor to furnish a dozen small islands.  
  
They visited the artificially aged replicas of tomb paintings at the Luxor, and examined shelves upon shelves of Egyptiana, everything from tacky Warner Brothers pastiches of famous Egyptian sculptures (Sylvester as Ramses I, Bugs as Nefertiti) to genuine New Kingdom and Alexandrian artifacts. They bought a small New Kingdom bronze rattle for young Michael Hannibal. They already had a nineteenth century set of monogrammed sterling baby dishes for him, but the ancient plaything seemed irresistible.  
  
They observed nickel slots players bullying the long suffering cocktail waitresses at Excalibur, sucking up free drinks well before lunch time as they poured their laundry money down the ever-waiting electronic throats of the machines. They saw more fake stonework and plastic armor and bright orange contrasted with medium blue there than Dr. Lecter could stand, and they left in a hurry.  
  
They visited the swollen emerald green MGM, entering through the stretched maw of a golden lion's jaws, and encountering perfect facsimiles of Dorothy and her friends from Oz at the doors. Clarice noticed that Dr. Lecter was staring particularly intently at the Scarecrow, an oddly abstracted expression in his eyes, but he declined to explain his interest. After they'd dropped by the walk-through lion habitat, and snickered at a restaurant that seemed to be a perfectly square chunk of authentic rain forest, complete with rain, they left.  
  
At New York, New York, they stopped for cappuccino in an indoor, climate controlled replica of Greenwich Village, and sat on a park bench in Central Park on a mild summer evening, even though it was high noon and early fall and thousands of miles from the Big Apple outside. They did not have to face muggers in this scrubbed-up version of the famous park, although their sense of reality took quite a beating.  
  
They saw a collection of notable cars at the Imperial Palace, and Clarice lectured knowledgeably on the autos, and spoke of how she'd dearly love to see James Dean's wrecked Spyder, mysteriously vanished, all these years.  
  
They visited Steve Wynn's vaunted collection of paintings at the Bellagio, found the collection unimpressive, and committed a daring and clever robbery of a single scarlet rosebud from the enclosed formal conservatory, in retaliation. And also so that Dr. Lecter would have something to wear in his lapel.  
  
They skipped Bally's entirely, since they both found the great oval frosted Lucite columns outside the entrance hideous beyond all reason and mutually agreed not to encourage the designers by entering the building.  
  
At the Barbary Coast, a small, maroon-painted dwarf of a resort at the corner of Flamingo and Las Vegas Boulevard, they did the only gambling they would bother with for the rest of their trip. They found a five dollar three deck blackjack table and Lecter sat down, took his dark glasses off to stare at the dealer, and then proceeded to count cards with such deadly accuracy that the man's practiced hands soon began to shake. They were up by fifteen hundred when a pit boss started to hover near their table, and the dealer looked about ready to faint, whether from the staring or the counting, none could tell. They left a handsome tip, and then left the casino, crossing the street on foot towards Caesar's Palace.  
  
Dr. Lecter appeared much cheered by this small exercise in torment, and entered the hallucinatory excess of Caesar's with renewed vigor.  
  
At Caesar's, they laughed at Cleopatra's Barge, marveled at the enormous sports book, currently giving odds on an upcoming Tyson/Holyfield bout, ran across Marc Anthony and Cleo herself in the casino, and Clarice surprised her companion by dragging him to visit the full scale reproduction of the David without prior warning as a joke.  
  
Lecter sneered and sneered at the huge plaster copy of an original he had once seen almost daily in Florence. But then he broke down and explained to her how the famous marble was really all about the suspension of time, the present contrasted against the future, the potential for action on the verge of exploding. He pointed out the tension in the young warrior's body, the fire in his marble eyes as he gazed, fatal sling lightly grasped on shoulder, at his massive opponent. He noted for her the genius of Michaelangelo, in the telling detail of the slender youth's disproportionately large hands and feet, a visual portent of the mighty man and king he would one day become. Clarice reflected that even a visit to Las Vegas could be culturally instructive, as long as one was in the company of an amateur art historian.  
  
Then Dr. Lecter surprised her by informing her that they had a luncheon reservation at Bertolini's, in the Forum Shops, and that they would be late if they didn't hustle.  
  
They passed through the huge casino again and entered the Forum Shops, Caesar's outlandish version of a retail mall, a sprawling labyrinth of Imperial Roman streets; the roughly finished faux flag stones of the Appian Way under their feet, and an artificial, ancient sky over their heads. As they walked among the other tourists toward the restaurant, the fake sky overhead cycled through dawn, noon, dusk and starry night within the space of a few minutes.  
  
They arrived at Bertolini's, a decent Italian style bistro, at the end of the synthetic cycle, and were seated at a good table on the patio, with an excellent view of the cheerfully hideous Festival Fountain, in the rosy light of an ersatz sunrise.  
  
"How in the world did you know to choose this place?" Clarice asked her companion, as she examined a menu.  
  
"According to the Las Vegas Sun, this is the best vantage point in the city for people watching," he answered, gazing at the highly ornate fountain with a mild grimace of distaste. "An activity, I confess, I am eager to partake in. My! Look at that dreadful fountain!"  
  
"If you think it's bad now, just wait a few minutes. I'm surprised you'd bother with the Sun, by the way. Not a paper famous for its quality."  
  
"Ah, well . . . when in Rome . . . " he smiled and waved a hand at their surroundings.  
  
They ordered grilled ahi, Pellegrino water, and, of course, Caesar salads, because neither of them were ones to abandon a good joke once it had taken root. And as they watched, all the statuary of the fountain; Venus, Mars, Diana, and Neptune, suddenly came to life and engaged in a rancorous animatronic debate with Bacchus.  
  
Dr. Lecter could not stop laughing at the display of robotic Roman divinity.  
  
"You know, in the grip of religious ecstasy," he commented, once the twelve- shows-a-day argument between the gods had ended. "The Bacchantes, the priestesses of old Bacchus there, would fall on the youth chosen to be the god's surrogate and rend him to pieces with their bare hands. A human sacrifice. And then they'd devour the flesh raw,"  
  
He stopped to glance at the fountain with a wicked smile. "Now THAT would have been a show!"  
  
"Perhaps a bit much for this venue," Clarice objected fairly calmly. She had grown somewhat inured to his bizarre gallows humor over the past year.  
  
"Oh? Do you think so? I'm not at all sure, myself. This entire city seems to be predicated on the principle of bread and circuses. I think these tourists might very much enjoy an electronic bloodbath once an hour."  
  
"Don't you mean US tourists, dear?" she asked sweetly. The profound cynicism and arrogant elitism were a bit harder to get used to.  
  
"Ah. Of course, an excellent point. And yet, when it comes to blood, we are not exactly tourists, are we, my love? Not with our combined body count."  
  
Their meals arrived in time to stop the hot rejoinder in Clarice's throat before it could be uttered. She was surprised at just how angry that last mordant jest had made her. She stabbed her salad cruelly with a fork until she could think of the most strategic reply.  
  
"You're just bugging me because you hate it here. It's exactly how I expected you to act."  
  
He glared at her redly for a moment. Bullseye! He despised being anticipated, she knew, hated it like poison. Especially accurately.  
  
Then he smiled, rather a rueful smile.  
  
"Have I become predictable, Clarice?" he asked softly. "Am I boring YOU?"  
  
"No. Never. But could you just pick on some more dealers or something when you get to feeling mean? I think I need a break."  
  
"You're right, of course," he confessed. Although he did not look even remotely apologetic. "Sometimes I do go out of my way to irritate you. It's just that being so roundly chastised for it is such a rare and exotic pleasure for me. I like it when you do that."  
  
She grinned. "I know. You always have."  
  
They shared a small smile of perfect understanding for a moment, at this reference to past talks, past skirmishes, going all the way back to the insane asylum where their lives had first become intertwined.  
  
The fucking nut hatch, Clarice thought, wryly. The ideal place, really, for us to have met. A week before Valentine's day, to be perfectly accurate. What romance! Call Harlequin!  
  
"Clarice?"  
  
"Yes?'  
  
"What else is . . . 'bugging you', as you've put it? Besides me? Will you tell me that? Something is troubling you, I'm certain of it. Has been since we got here. Are you worried about this party tomorrow night? Or is it something else?"  
  
She sighed. There was no such thing as privacy in this relationship. Not for her, anyway. He could sense the minutest variations in emotion as unerringly as an oyster senses the tide.  
  
"It's being back here," she admitted. "In the States. In Las Vegas. Places where I've been before. A familiar place, a place all Americans know. I thought I missed all this, a little, I thought . . . but now that I'm here, I find I can't . . . quite . . . connect. Understand? I feel removed, like I'm not really part of it anymore. Like I'm playing a role, being a tourist."  
  
"You've had to come a long distance, Clarice, to come with me. Perhaps this trip has given you too clear a perspective on how much you've changed."  
  
"No. That's not it. I think I'm getting a perspective on how LITTLE I've changed. I guess that's what's bothering me. I always felt cut off. I just never had to admit it to myself before we came here."  
  
"Every human being has many potentials. One cannot realize them all in a single lifetime. This path you've chosen, it's only one among many you might have taken, might still take. Do you now regret this choice?"  
  
He was watching her carefully.  
  
"No. I'm RELIEVED. You see? I'm sitting here thanking my damned lucky stars I don't have to live the way I used to. I'll never have to beat my head against a glass ceiling or put up with a boss from hell again. I'll never have to drink myself to sleep or do my crying to the washing machine again. I'll never suffer a casual sexual insult from some moron or worry about muggers in the park again, and no one will EVER fuck with me again, because you won't permit my enemies to live."  
  
She stopped and took a sip of her Pellegrino, a harsh, humorless smile on her face.  
  
"Go on," he said, giving her his full attention, completely serious.  
  
"I look at you and think about this party we're going to . . . our first time as ourselves, at least to Margot, maybe a few others," she went on. "And I'm PROUD of myself. Proud to be with you, where people can see. You're HIM, the one, the guy people never stop whispering about. You're a star, in your way, the best in the field. And I . . . I just love it. A part of me does. Do you follow? It's immoral, sure, but worse, it's smug and stupid and dangerous. I should have said 'no way' when this trip first came up. But I think I just wanted to come back and spit in their eyes."  
  
"And you feel guilty about this? Clarice, why NOT spit in their eyes? Aren't you allowed? You'll remember I asked you about your rage long ago. Frankly, I'm delighted to hear you say these things."  
  
"Yeah . . . yeah, I DO feel guilty, but that's not all of it. It's self indulgence, and it's reckless, and I can't help feeling we may have to pay for it. Saying 'fuck you' whenever you feel like it is a luxury. Prices on that little item are high. As you yourself know from experience. Nine years worth."  
  
"Cheap at twice the cost, Clarice. What's a few years? We were not made to submit. Neither of us."  
  
"But now every year counts. We have things to lose now."  
  
His eyes widened slightly, as though he was startled by her comment. A strange frisson touched them both, lightly, like a cool finger of wind tapping faintly at their backs.  
  
Then the moment broke and Lecter shrugged. "One cannot control fate. Most control, actually, is illusion. Would you rather we leave Las Vegas now?"  
  
"No . . . no. I don't want that. No fear, right?"  
  
"In most cases, yes. I will admit, however, that this ahi is a bit frightening."  
  
Clarice laughed, some small portion of her good humor restored. "The salad's not bad "  
  
"Now that you've slain it so thoroughly with your trusty fork? Have I told you today how lovely you look? The sun you took earlier is showing in your face. And I quite like your scarf."  
  
"Of course you do. You gave it to me for . . . was it Groundhog Day? April Fool's? Or Saint Swithin's?"  
  
"For the seventh day of Advent, I believe. And now I have another gift for you."  
  
He reached across the table and handed her a small, creamy envelope.  
  
She smiled. "I don't mind all the presents, either, since we're talking about your good points. Thank you. What's the occasion this time?"  
  
"Oh, say it's an early Halloween gift."  
  
She opened the envelope and found a tasteful buff colored card, a pass to an afternoon at the Canyon Ranch Spa Club and Salon. This afternoon, in fact.  
  
"I didn't think you really wanted to bring Norma to this party. So, perhaps you'd care to go and revisit Clarice. You don't spend enough time gazing into your glass, you know. Perhaps it's time you did."  
  
"For half a day?" she questioned, torn between Lutheran pragmatism and hedonistic vanity.  
  
"At the least. Calm your fears. Ease your mind. Wallow in sensory gratification. Have something outlandish done to your hair. Go play."  
  
She stared at him.  
  
"How did you know I'd need something like this? How could you know that?"  
  
He smiled, smugly. "I have my ways. Some things will never be told, Clarice."  
  
"I suppose not . . ." she murmured, and then squeezed his hand. "It's perfect. Thank you. But are you sure you want to trust me about the hair?"  
  
"Oh, that reminds me. Shake the envelope."  
  
She did as he suggested, and two small emerald studs in platinum settings fell out onto the table and flashed like pirate treasure.  
  
"To wear to the salon. As a kind of style guide," he explained, an ironic smile on his lips.  
  
"I see. Make sure I do justice to the earrings?"  
  
"On the contrary. They hardly do justice to you."  
  
He rose smoothly from his seat and came around to her side of the table.  
  
He took the pair of the earrings up. "May I?" he asked, and then bent to put one of the studs into her ear, and then the other. Then he finished the small ritual with a kiss to both ears, in turn.  
  
"A reminder, only. Like . . . oh . . . like a pair of post-it notes. Of what a splendid creature you are. You tend to forget it. And now you'd better run, little Starling, or you'll miss your first appointment."  
  
She rose from the table as he pulled her chair out.  
  
"What will you do?" she asked, gathering up her handbag and jacket. "Are you going to be all right, on your own?"  
  
He helped her on with the jacket. "In the savage wilds of Las Vegas, and not a guide in sight? I think I'll be able to manage. I plan to visit that F.A.O. Schwartz down the way and buy some particularly noisy toys for young Michael, for one thing."  
  
"Will you manage to stay out of trouble?"  
  
He laughed. "I don't promise THAT."  
  
"Where am I going, after I'm done? Back to the hotel?"  
  
"No, meet me at Renoir, at eight. It's in one of these hyper-thyroidal pleasure domes around here, the one called "Mirage", I've read."  
  
"In the "Sun", I suppose. Okay, eight tonight. I'll be wearing emeralds, so you know me."  
  
"Agreed."  
  
They came together for a quick embrace, giving due consideration to the public setting. And then Clarice was off.  
  
Dr. Lecter sat back down at his table, watching her until she was out of sight. Then he returned his full attention to a young couple near the fountain whom he had noticed earlier.  
  
They'd been arguing steadily for some twenty minutes or so, and the argument had been escalating in patterned increments. From the hangdog expression on the young man's face, the closed and slumped posture of his body, and the panicked, accusing attitude of his female companion, Dr. Lecter felt reasonably certain the argument was probably about lost money and excessive gambling. And it was on the verge of exploding into a scene.  
  
He settled back into his chair comfortably and watched, awaiting further developments.  
  
There were all kinds of shows in Las Vegas. If one knew how to look. And there were always compensations, even in the direst straits.  
  
************************************************************* 


	6. Chapter Six

Chapter Six  
  
Margot Verger, Judy Ingram, and Michael Hannibal Verger were hemmed in by a large knot of party guests and well-wishers near the pool when Margot noticed a uniquely handsome couple emerging from the hacienda style house and out onto the great, tiered, central patio. Only her statuesque height allowed her to see over the heads of the knot of people that enclosed her.  
  
She'd seen this couple at the church, at the christening ceremony, but had been looking from an even worse vantage point there and had not been certain she recognized them. Now she could be certain. If she could just get a better look.  
  
The party was in full swing. Over a hundred guests were already partying on the great terra cotta tiled patio, out in the landscaped grounds, around the pool, in the house. The guests were an eclectic mix of athletes and those in the sports industry, members of Judy's Ingram's wildly prolific family, members of the Las Vegas and West Coast gay communities, local artists and writers, a number of bona fide celebrities, and all of Judy and Margot's neighbors. There were only a few Verger hangers-on and tame politicians present, and fewer still of Margot's fellow industrialists.  
  
Three separate bars had been set up in the shelter of the arcades that enclosed the patio on three sides, and a sea of margaritas, Corona, and Jose Cuervo flowed from each of them. The fragrances of Tex-Mex specialties and barbecued meats eddied around the open flame outdoor kitchen Margot's caterers had set up, and many party-goers were sampling at the buffet tables nearby.  
  
A four man mariachi combo strolled along one of the second floor galleries that overlooked the patio, and vied with the decent five piece rock and roll band that was playing oldies from the bandstand near the pool. People were dancing there, on a temporary folding dance-floor, and also all around the pool and deck, and on the tiles of the patio, and all over the grass.  
  
A good sized gang of children were watching one of their number whale blindfolded at a pinata hung from a gallery rafter, and lots of childish giggling and many high pitched admonitions to "whack it again, Franklin, whack it again!" could be heard.  
  
Multi-colored twinkle lights had been strung along every conceivable angle and surface, and many butane outdoor heaters kept off the slight chill of the autumn evening. And pleasantly scary Halloween decorations were everywhere, as well as glowing jack-o-lanterns.  
  
Margot craned her neck to catch sight of the couple again, and finally she found them, moving away from the house doors and past the pinata bashing children.  
  
The woman was lovely, trim and petite in moss green silk, her hair in a platinum gamine cut that emphasized the slender grace of her throat and shoulders. The man was slim, lithe and erect, fine-featured and dark, and somehow managed to cut through the crowds of party goers near the doors easily, like a blade moving through water. Neither face was clearly recognizable, but the distinctive modes of movement were easy to identify in both cases, especially to Margot's athlete's eye.  
  
"I'll be damned," she exclaimed to herself, grinning. "They really came!"  
  
She did not bother to examine the happy little lift of gladness that moved her at the sight of these old acquaintances.  
  
She immediately put her hand on Judy's shoulder and squeezed lightly. Judy looked away from the baby she was holding and glanced at Margot questioningly.  
  
"Some people I'd like you and Michael to meet, hon," she said, just under her breath. "Extra special guests. Over by the doors there. Let's see if we can get out of this crush."  
  
Margot guided her unconventional little family out of the crowd that surrounded them steadily and determinedly. Most of Margot's guests were courteous enough to let their hostess through to greet new arrivals; a few determined boot-lickers and baby-gushers gave way more reluctantly, and one persistent fellow who had not succeeded in getting through the original crowd followed in Margot's footsteps, determined to speak to her one way or another.  
  
Margot paid no attention to any of these pests, she was so intent on the new arrivals. She used her long stride and bulky body to clear a path and leave even the most persistent behind.  
  
The four adults and one baby converged near a collection of ornamental cacti that gave them all a small measure of privacy, at least on one side.  
  
"Hi, folks," Margot said, barely suppressing a burst of laughter. "Glad you could make it. Enjoying Las Vegas?"  
  
"Margot. Darling. You miserable, manipulating, maneuvering wretch," Dr. Lecter said pleasantly, and then kissed Margot's cheek. "Thank you for having us. You remember my companion, I think?"  
  
Margot smiled warmly at Starling. "Sure, we met, that one time, didn't we? I liked your car. How ya doing, girl? You sure LOOK like you're doing okay."  
  
It was a strange meeting, full of hidden meanings and tacit jokes, certain names not exchanged aloud, the cries of exited children at play providing an odd counterpoint to the carefully oblique introductions.  
  
"Meet Judy Ingram," Margot said to Dr. Lecter. "Judy, this is . . . this is the old friend of the family you've heard me talk about from time to time, and a friend of his I may have mentioned too."  
  
Judy was a short, slightly plump brunette with an engaging, cherubic face and clever brown hands. She gave one to Dr. Lecter, reaching awkwardly past the chubby baby in her arms.  
  
"It's good to meet you," she said, in a soft, musical voice. "I've heard a lot about you. I gather we owe you rather a lot." She smiled at her baby, and looked back at Lecter.  
  
"Oh, not at all," Dr. Lecter answered. "I offered a few suggestions, perhaps. Little more. You are the one who did the real work, Miss Ingram. He looks in perfect health. My congratulations. May I hold him?"  
  
Judy handed the squirmy bundle to Lecter without hesitation, and he immediately raised the child to head height so that he could look intently into the tiny face. The baby stared back, goggling with his wide blue eyes at the stranger who held him. The infant and the man, bound by a common name and the blind, bizarre connections of fate, presented an odd tableau together.  
  
Judy turned to Starling. "Nice to meet you too."  
  
"Congratulations," Starling answered. "I think you may have the world's cutest baby there."  
  
Judy dimpled prettily at the compliment.  
  
"You better believe it!" Margot remarked, laughing. "Easily the world's cutest. AND the world's fattest."  
  
"And, as of just now, the world's wettest, I fear," Dr. Lecter remarked. "A small indiscretion on young Master Michael's part."  
  
Judy laughed. "Naughty baby! It's not nice to pee on the guests. Say you're sorry now, Mikey."  
  
"He doesn't look sorry," Lecter teased, holding the little body away from himself and peering again into the small face. He spoke directly to the baby. "You'll have to learn to modify your commentary soon enough, won't you, Michael Hannibal? Best to hold out as long as you can."  
  
Michael Hannibal, upon registering that he was in a wet diaper, let out a lusty howl of outrage in reply to Dr. Lecter's advice.  
  
All the adults smiled at the infant's wrath as Judy reached for him.  
  
"Give him to me, I'll go change him," she said.  
  
"What admirably direct self-expression," Lecter said, handing the damp baby over to his mother.  
  
"Poor angry baby," Margot sympathized with the squalling Verger heir as Judy left the small group and moved toward the house. She glanced at her guests, and smiled, almost a shy smile. "It's . . . it's really good to see you. To see you both. Weird, huh?"  
  
"Survivor bond," Lecter said, quietly. "We all experienced . . . trying times together, in one way or another. A common experience."  
  
"And we all came out the better for it," Clarice added. "Been around the dark side of the moon and back."  
  
"Happy endings all around," Margot agreed. "Not like the movies, is it? The bad guys never come out ahead there."  
  
"It's much easier to determine who the bad guys are, in the movies," Lecter objected. "I like your home, Margot, other than the location. It's . . . lively."  
  
"Yes," said Clarice. "Fun. Who did all the jack-o-lanterns?"  
  
"Oh, that's a big Vegas tradition - decorating for Halloween. The whole town gets totally into it. And Judy and me are pumpkin carving fools," Margot explained. "Are you guys hungry? Thirsty? How about a couple of brewskis?"  
  
She grinned at Dr. Lecter, who was already wrinkling his nose in distaste.  
  
"I'll take a Corona," Clarice said, also grinning. She glanced at Lecter and her grin widened. "Got any hot dogs?" she added, to Margot.  
  
The three of them moved toward one of the bars, continuing to chat as they walked.  
  
"Did the christening gifts we sent you get here all right?" Dr. Lecter asked.  
  
Margot laughed. "Sure. All of them. The silver dishes are exquisite, and the rattle . . . like we're really gonna let a baby play with a two thousand year old Egyptian artifact! Beautiful. Incredible. Judy actually teared up a little. But I suppose you know which things Mikey likes the best, don't you? The mini bongo set, and the stuffed toad that croaks when he squeezes it, and, of course, the keyboard he can play in his crib by kicking at it. Thanks awfully for those. I bet I know who thought of THEM."  
  
Lecter smiled innocently. But his eyes flared with a slight vindictive sparkle. They gathered around the bar and the hired bartender poured a margarita for Margot, a beer for Clarice, and fished out a dusty bottle of Lillet for the doctor.  
  
"And my hostess gift!" Margot went on, pretending to gush with gratitude. "A complete video library of women-in-prison movies! You shouldn't have!"  
  
Their conversation was interrupted, and Dr. Lecter was spared the effort of further attempts to look innocent, when the whine of audio feedback suddenly sounded and a man spoke into a mike on the bandstand.  
  
"Ladies and gentlemen - in honor of this happy occasion, and this terrific party, I'd like to dedicate this song to little Michael Verger!"  
  
Then he immediately began to belt out "Born in the U.S. A." in a rough baritone that was instantly recognizable to millions.  
  
"Holy shit!" Clarice exclaimed, utterly transfixed. "That's Bruce Springsteen!"  
  
"Oh, yeah, he's in town on a club date," Margot commented casually. "I met him at an environmental conference in DC a few months ago. Sweet guy, I was glad he was in town for the party. But I didn't think he'd sing tonight, and of course I'd never ask him. Totally cool!"  
  
"Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God . . . " Clarice chanted, virtually incoherent.  
  
"I do apologize, Margot," Lecter remarked dryly. "My companion seems to have lost her mind."  
  
"I haven't heard rock like this since . . . oh my God, it's really HIM!" Clarice enthused. She'd already begun to sway to the impassioned modern anthem of the American working classes.  
  
Margot frowned at Dr. Lecter in mock severity. "Did you whisk this poor woman off to some culture-vulture paradise and cut her off from her life's blood? You devil! How could you?"  
  
She put one of her big arms around Clarice, who was jiving helplessly to the pulsing beat, as though she were a cobra in the thrall of a skillful snake charmer. "You poor thing. I bet he won't let you watch baseball and eat Hamburger Helper either. Would you like to meet Bruce?"  
  
"Bruce? BRUCE??! FUCK yeah, I'd like to meet him! Was that a trick question?"  
  
Margot and Clarice shrieked with laughter and somehow managed to sound like the pair of teenage girls they had both once been. Dr. Lecter looked on, bemused and somewhat puzzled by this unexpected dual psychotic break.  
  
"You don't understand," Clarice told him, laughing. "It's . . . THE BOSS!"  
  
"Let's go," Margot said. "Maybe if we sweet-talk him a little, he'll do 'This Gun for Hire'! You'll excuse us, won't you?" she added to Lecter.  
  
Lecter waved his hands towards the bandstand in a languid shooing motion, amused. "Oh, by all means. The Cult of Celebrity. I would never presume to stand in the way."  
  
The two women moved off toward the bandstand, and Dr. Lecter was left alone. He looked around and noticed two arguments between couples brewing, three seductions in progress, five wallflowers of both sexes giving off typical desperate vibrations, four drunks on the verge of passing out, two preteen boys swiping half full beer bottles and drinking the contents, six intense discussions about money and business ventures, ten small groups involved in intense gossip exchange, one compulsive overeater at a buffet table, and three separate hapless party-goers that had each been cornered by veteran bores.  
  
He deepened his attention, cast the net of his perception a bit wider, and started to wander among the partying guests, subtle currents of emotion coming to him, bits of conversation, tableaux and exchanges, minute variations in attitude, the expressions of dozens of different hopes and fears and pleasures and pains. He was a man who, in his own singular way, much enjoyed the company of people.  
  
He was very good at moving among others unnoticed, when he chose to; he had the knack of making himself unobtrusive. Yet, as he wandered and audited the emotions of those around him, he thought he detected a certain attention focused specifically on himself. He stopped, and stood stock still a moment, casting for the psychic scent of this focus.  
  
There was talk of the baby, of course, and surreptitious gossip about the child's unusual parentage. That Mason Verger had fathered the child, very nearly posthumously, was naturally a matter for speculation and discussion. And when the late Mason Verger was mentioned, it was inevitable that his own name should come up.  
  
Whispers and rumors and half appalled, half titillated discourse:  
  
" . . . murdered in his bed . . ."  
  
" . . . ruined him for life and came back seventeen years later and finished the job . . . "  
  
" . . . actually ATE his face . . . "  
  
" . . . an EEL! Can you imagine? . . . "  
  
" . . . escaped, never been found yet . . . "  
  
" . . . out there somewhere, still . . . "  
  
" . . . Lecter . . . "  
  
" . . . Hannibal Lecter . . . "  
  
" . . . Hannibal the Cannibal . . . "  
  
Dr. Lecter relaxed a fraction and reeled in the tendrils of his consciousness a bit. He was well accustomed to this type of shadowy fame, to being whispered of from behind hands and out of the sides of mouths, a taboo subject matter, forbidden and fascinating, like sex or death. He decided that this undercurrent of scandalized gossip was the likely origin of the attention he sensed. He dismissed his own mild unease and moved on.  
  
But Dr. Lecter was making a mistake. One he would, in the fullness of time, come to bitterly regret.  
  
A pair of wide eyes watched from a safe distance as Dr. Lecter moved away into the crowd.  
  
Earlier, when Margot Verger had disentangled herself and her loved ones from the crowd of guests to go and greet two new arrivals, most of those guests had courteously made way. One persistent fellow, however, had not been willing to let her go, and had rudely followed her, determined to speak to the new proprietor of the Verger fortune, upon whom his professional life depended.  
  
That persistent fellow gazed at Dr. Lecter's straight back now, as Lecter faded into the rest of the crowd and was finally lost to view.  
  
This man had followed Margot, and had overheard most of her conversation with the handsome couple she had gone to meet.  
  
He had not recognized either the man or the woman by sight. He had simply stood several paces away from the small group of friends and listened, waiting for a convenient pause in the conversation so that he could break in.  
  
But the man's VOICE. That had been . . . familiar, somehow. A chill had seized him at the sound, and he'd felt an odd stinging sensation in his eyes, as though from old tears, tears shed long ago. Some instinct, some half-formed memory, warned him to move out of sight behind the ornamental cactus collection, and there he had listened, hidden among the thorns.  
  
That voice . . . something about that voice . . .  
  
An easy conversation, clearly pleasant and amicable, a meeting of old friends and their significant others. These people knew each other, shared some bond.  
  
But the introductions had been strange. One sided. The names of the two newcomers had never been mentioned.  
  
A very faint metallic rasp in the man's voice, a cutting edge at odds with the pleasant softness and cultured cadences.  
  
When he'd heard this voice before, that rasp had been more pronounced . . .  
  
But where had he heard this voice before? The memory danced just at the outer borders of clear recall, just out of reach.  
  
A memory that, if clearly recalled, would be abhorrent. He had been somehow certain of that. Something terrible. Something monstrous.  
  
" . . . a small indiscretion on Master Michael's part . . . " the voice had said.  
  
The familiar voice. "A small indiscretion". A wet baby. No names exchanged. Urine soaked diapers. A metallic rasp. Wet bedclothes, a history of bed- wetting. Sting of old tears behind his eyes. Pain. Terror. Grinding, intolerable humiliation.  
  
" . . . a small indiscretion in a child, a more troubling condition in an adult. Have you sought professional help?"  
  
The voice filled with spurious concern, mocking, mocking . . .  
  
The monster in his cage, unwavering, merciless eyes that saw everything, an almost kind smile on the pale face, a shameful secret, among other things, cruelly brought to light.  
  
He, at the age of forty-three, had still been unable to control his bed- wetting, an ignominious hold-over from an unbearable childhood. His father had beaten him for it until he was sixteen.  
  
The caged THING had known. No bars, no netting, no barrier known to man could hold back that implacable, piercing, damaging insight. He'd been stripped naked in the fiend's binding gaze within the space of moments. The pain had been unspeakable.  
  
He'd wept.  
  
Hannibal Lecter.  
  
Dr. Doemling, holder of the Verger Chair of psychology at Baylor University in Waco, Texas, had shuddered uncontrollably behind his flimsy shelter of cactus, and tears sprang to his eyes once again, though he did not notice this.  
  
Dr. Doemling, though haunted by old sorrows and secrets, had a particularly well developed sense of self-promotion. His shock and fright at discovering the presence of the most infamous serial killer of the twentieth century was easily subsumed in his curiosity as to HOW that killer came to be at this party for a child of mysterious parentage, conversing familiarly with his hostess, a woman whose only brother he had allegedly murdered, only a year ago.  
  
These were suggestive circumstances. It was likely that such circumstances could be turned to Dr. Doemling's advantage. Margot Verger had declined to endow his Chair this year, and he had come to this party uninvited to remind her of her family obligation. He had hoped to find her in an amenable state of mind on such a happy occasion.  
  
And he'd come to beg, if need be. He could not have borne being turned out of his comfy academic position. Not at his age, not with his rather mediocre body of research and published works. Finding a similar position elsewhere would have been impossible.  
  
But now, he might not have to beg for Margot Verger's clemency at all. In fact, she might well have to beg for his.  
  
So he listened to the rest of the conversation between the four people carefully, and contrived to catch glimpses of the group while staying strictly hidden himself.  
  
Lecter had brought a date! Incredible. Doemling thought there might be something vaguely familiar about the attractive blonde on the doctor's arm, but he could not identify her at first.  
  
" . . . survivor bond . . . " he heard Lecter saying. " . . . a common experience . . . "  
  
The FBI agent, Clarice Starling, was thought to have been at Muskrat Farm, the scene of the murder of Mason Verger. Her gun and other items that had belonged to her had been found. A common experience . . .  
  
She'd disappeared, was never seen again after that night. It had been assumed, though never officially, that Lecter had killed her and hidden her body. Or eaten it, perhaps.  
  
Hannibal Lecter had written to her and sent her gifts and obviously thought often of her over all the years since the two had first met at the Baltimore Asylum. He was clearly fixated on the woman.  
  
The blonde had a pleasingly angular, high-cheekboned face. He had seen photos of Clarice Starling. The hair was different, and the distinctive beauty spot on the cheek was missing, but the cheekbones were the same.  
  
It was her. Neither dead, nor, as far as he could tell, under any duress. Laughing with Margot Verger, just now, about Bruce Springsteen, like a giddy teenager. Happy. The willing consort of an inhuman monster of incomparable perversion, it seemed.  
  
A beautiful woman. He himself had never successfully bedded such a beauty, and the unbidden comparison that came to his mind seared and rankled.  
  
The two women, Verger and Starling, left Lecter and started toward the bandstand. Lecter gazed around himself for a moment, and then wandered away. Doemling followed his progress warily, watching through the spiky cactus.  
  
Then Lecter stopped, and stood still.  
  
Doemlng's stomach and throat constricted and he felt a visceral stab of absolute terror.  
  
Had Lecter seen him? SENSED him?  
  
No. The moment passed, and Lecter moved on.  
  
Dr. Doemling gathered himself and continued to think of the main chance and how it could relate to him. A thought struck him and he cautiously went inside the house. He'd seen a number of opened gifts displayed in the great room of the large home, along with the cards that had accompanied each gift.  
  
He would be looking for a card in a unique copperplate hand. A card that would likely have no signature. A card that would bear the mark, on its reverse side, of the resort or hotel that had delivered the package as part of its concierge services.  
  
He would certainly use his newfound knowledge to apply pressure to Margot Verger. His ambitions could now go well beyond the Chair he held at some cow college in a small Texas city, and he felt certain that Ms. Verger would be eager to make anything he might wish happen, in exchange for his silence about her problematical "old friend".  
  
But he wanted to know where Lecter and his deceived whore were staying, and he wanted to know before he talked to Margot.  
  
He would blackmail Margot Verger. Certainly he would. But first, as soon as he left the party, he would call the FBI, and the Las Vegas PD, and maybe the goddamned National Guard and the Air Force, and he would turn that sick fuck, Lecter, in. His intense hatred of the man who'd once made him cry twisted like a wire in his guts.  
  
Tonight. For certain. But from a safe distance.  
  
He found the great room he sought empty, and began his examination of the baby gifts.  
  
He did not see Judy Ingram, curled up in an overstuffed armchair, nursing her child.  
  
Judy watched the balding, dry little man perusing the gifts absently at first, and then with closer attention. There was something curiously intent in his attitude, and something almost . . . sly . . . in the way he glanced around himself at intervals. As though he was doing something underhanded, and did not wish to be seen.  
  
She stirred herself and rose from her chair quietly, and, Michael in her arms, crept up behind the man. He was reading the card that had come with the beautiful antique silver baby service.  
  
"Hi," she said quietly, and saw him tense, startled. "I'm Judy Ingram. Can I help you find something?"  
  
"Oh . . . oh, no, thank you. Just nosy, I guess," he confessed, a wide, patently false smile on his dry, flaky face. "This is a beautiful set, one of the finest, really, I've seen. I collect sterling. I was just wondering where it came from."  
  
"Do I know you?" Judy asked, not really buying his glib explanations. "I don't think we've met."  
  
"I don't think so. I'm an . . . associate of Margot's. Dr. Everett Doemling."  
  
He put out his dry hand for Judy to shake. She took it, because to reject it would have been too overtly confrontational. She didn't really know what is was about this man that made her dislike and disbelieve him. She just knew that she did.  
  
"So, Margot invited you?" she asked.  
  
"Yes, indeed she did. It's been a lovely party, too. And this must be Michael. What a fine little fellow he is!"  
  
Judy smiled coolly. A blatant attempt to distract her. But why? What was he hiding? He hadn't stolen anything, she'd been watching.  
  
"Well, now, I suppose I'd better leave you two alone," he said, brightly. "Feeding time, eh? I'm so sorry if I've intruded."  
  
"No problem," Judy said coldly. She did not like this man. Not at all.  
  
He bustled out of the room in a hurried flurry of polite cheer and trite comments.  
  
Judy watched after him for a moment, trying to decide if she should go and find Margot and ask her about him. Doemling, he'd said, Dr. Everett Doemling . . .  
  
Michael Hannibal gurgled just then, and cooed winningly at his mommy. He was still hungry.  
  
Judy smiled at the cooing baby.  
  
"Sorry for the interruption, Mikey," she said, and went back to her chair to sit down. "Some creepy geek, huh?"  
  
She made a mental note to talk to Margot about Dr. Doemling later. Just now, baby needed his supper. She bared her breast for the hungry child and sighed.  
  
Outside, Dr. Doemling was getting into his Olds and driving away.  
  
************************************************************* 


	7. Chapter Seven

Chapter Seven  
  
October 15th, Sunday, 10:00 PM, Summerlin  
  
The party had just begun to wind down, slowly and pleasantly, in that satisfying way that successful parties do. Margot and Judy and baby Mikey sat with Clarice Starling and Hannibal Lecter in a quiet corner of the patio, a sheltered and private alcove warmed by a cheerful blaze in an outdoor fireplace and illuminated by the orange glow of several jack-o- lanterns.  
  
Earlier, to oblige Margot Verger, and without much urging, Springsteen had actually done a whole set, including most of his best loved hits. He'd proven to be friendly and likable when Margot had introduced him to Starling, and, to Clarice Starling's everlasting delight, had asked to dance with her after he'd finished singing and the band had gone on without its impromptu vocalist.  
  
The two of them had boogied through the hired band's vigorous (if slightly inexpert) renditions of "Runaway" and "Blue Suede Shoes", but then the band had stated to play "Little Red Riding Hood" in honor of Halloween, only two weeks away. Starling had been seized with a fit of the giggles and she'd had to excuse herself. The evening had suddenly become too surreal to deal with, at least, not without another Corona.  
  
And there had been something else, too. Springsteen was a good dancer, a great performer, a pop icon and an authentic cutie-pie, and he probably had the best ass in America, possibly the world. And Clarice Starling would never forget the night she danced with The Boss, not as long as she lived.  
  
But she had an esoteric icon of her own, and she'd started to miss him, even as she twirled in Bruce Springsteen's arms. When she'd heard the first spine-tingling howl of the facetious oldie "Little Red Riding Hood", that hunger for her own dark and wolfish lover had trebled.  
  
In a silly but essentially true way, the song was the story of her life. She'd had enough of rock and roll and the American Way for one night, maybe for good. She'd grown accustomed to wilder music. She'd gone off to find Dr. Lecter at once.  
  
As the party had peaked and then wound down, the two couples, Judy and Margot, Hannibal and Clarice, had gravitated to this pleasant alcove, and had settled in to chat. It was a calm, strangely relaxed interlude, marked by an odd peace. Judy sat cross-legged on a cushioned rattan loveseat beside Margot, baby Michael sleeping soundly in her lap, her curly brown head resting against Margot's shoulder. Dr. Lecter had a wicker armchair, and Clarice had perched on a stool at his feet, one arm comfortably draped over his knee. Every so often he would reach down and stroke her head.  
  
A strange grouping. Two unconventional couples, one slightly outside commonly accepted social norms, the other grotesquely beyond all sane social boundaries. Two multiple murderers. One killer-in-the-line-of-duty, government trained and sanctioned. Two orphans. One incest survivor. One child of old blood and ancient aristocracy, one child of poverty and rural tradition, one child of corrupt fortune and the Industrial Revolution. And one blameless Madonna and babe, to round out the peculiar tapestry.  
  
Clarice thought she could begin to understand why Margot had chosen Judy Ingram to be her love and her life partner. Judy was so whole, so sane, so unlike any of the rest of them.  
  
Clarice was musing on stories and fables and the persistence of myth as she listened to the desultory conversation. On how classic stories seemed to twine in and out of all their lives almost organically, like . . . oh, like Jack's famous beanstalk, perhaps, or the thicket of thorns that had magically sprung up around Sleeping Beauty's castle.  
  
Sleeping Beauty. Now there was a tale. They had foolishly failed to invite Maleficent, the evil fairy, to Aurora's christening. And there had been hell to pay as a result of this rude omission. But Margot Verger was too smart, and too intrinsically decent, to make the same mistake. In stories, just like in the movies, it was easy to tell who the bad guys were. Life, however, as a certain malevolent spirit of her own acquaintance had once told her, was much more slippery than that.  
  
The conversation between the four lacked any direct reference to the past, but centered instead on the potential future for the infant Verger. Each of them, with the possible exception of Judy Ingram, had been damaged and misshapen early on in their respective lives; all of the life paths they had taken had been diversions and derangements to compensate for these early injuries and the fragmentation they'd caused. None had yet found the way back from these skewed and crooked courses, although they had each found some hope and some frail happiness, in recent times.  
  
Michael, though, was yet untouched and well protected, and all the ways there were still lay cleanly open before him. This was something they all found precious, in their various fashions, and so the talk revolved around him and his unspoiled future.  
  
They speculated on what his first words might be, and when he would take his first steps upright. Would he one day play in a little league? Or would solitary sports appeal to him more? Would he have a favorite stuffed toy? An imaginary friend? Would he have enthusiasms and interests and worship dinosaurs and want grow up to be an astronaut? What college would he choose, and would he one day take up the running of the Verger empire of meat? Or might he go some other way entirely, and paint pictures or record rap hits or write a great American novel?  
  
Could he be sheltered and guided and all the woes of the world kept at bay for him? Would his future remain as open and untainted is it was on this autumn night?  
  
For Clarice Starling and Hannibal Lecter, the immediate future held danger and hurt and terrible risk.  
  
But they didn't know that. And so they enjoyed this quiet time with friends with whom they shared a history, a rare pleasure for them both. And not a dark thought entered their minds.  
  
Sunday, 10:00 PM, Circus Circus, Room 1211  
  
Dr. Doemling was encountering obstacles. At Margot Verger's home, he had learned that Lecter and Starling were staying at the Four Seasons, a snooty haven for fat-cats at the south end of the Strip. He himself could not afford such luxury. He had a basic room at Circus Circus, and was sitting on his hard hotel bed, thinking feverishly, right now.  
  
He had to think. In his first flush of fear and bitter triumph and hate, he'd picked up the phone as soon as he'd gotten inside his room and dialed 911. And the moment he'd mentioned the name "Hannibal Lecter", the dispatcher on the other end of the line had immediately hung up on him, clearly convinced his call was an early Halloween prank.  
  
That had been a good thing. He had not thought things through, had not decided how he might do this in whatever way would be most beneficial to himself. But now he would consider. He would consider carefully.  
  
The Four Seasons, yes, that was their hotel. But he did not know what names they were registered under, and they would hardly have checked in as themselves.  
  
Further, he'd left the party abruptly, and chances were, Lecter would still be there. He'd seemed cozy enough with Margot Verger, and would likely not have left early. The last thing Dr. Doemling wanted was for Lecter to be apprehended at the Verger residence. Should that happen, he would be left with no leverage over Margot Verger at all.  
  
So, the first thing was, he must wait until Lecter would have had time to return to his own hotel. It was there that the trap must be sprung. Doemling glanced at his watch. Ten o'clock . . .  
  
Then, he must decide on a plausible story. He could not tell the authorities the truth about where he had first seen Lecter, or again, he would compromise Margot, and his own prospects for blackmail.  
  
No, he must say he had spotted Lecter at the Four Seasons. Perhaps in the bar? Yes, that would work, but he would need to go over there shortly, or it might come out that he had never actually BEEN at the hotel to see the twisted bastard. He must make a showing at the bar, so witnesses could remember him later. And he must do it soon, or his path and Lecter's might yet cross.  
  
And then, how to make the authorities believe him? Since Lecter's spectacular murder of the Italian policeman in Florence, and his grisly and well publicized killing of Mason Verger, Lecter sightings had become almost as common as Elvis sightings. The whole world knew the monster was still at large. Flakes, loonies and assorted nuts were always claiming to have seen the infamous serial killer everywhere.  
  
Doemling had originally intended to make a few anonymous phone calls, but he now understood that this would not work. He must use his own credentials as a tenured university psychologist, and his own face to face acquaintance with the fiend, to establish his credibility. For this, he must blow the whistle in person.  
  
Where best, then?  
  
A quick scan of the government section in the yellow pages provided the answer. The Las Vegas FBI field office. 700 Charleston Avenue, not even particularly far away. Lecter was fifth on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list, with a bullet. The agents there would be ecstatic to learn of a reliable sighting and current location on this premier fugitive, and would listen carefully to anyone who sounded even a little bit credible. And, as a little added bonus, the FBI offered substantial rewards for information leading to the arrest and conviction . . . up to a million dollars worth.  
  
Although Dr. Doemling did not really expect it to go that far. He believed Hannibal Lecter would die before he would ever allow himself to be recaptured. And he believed the FBI would be more than willing to oblige him in this preference. By dawn tomorrow, Dr. Doemling expected, Hannibal Lecter most likely be dead. And that suited him fine.  
  
Mention Clarice Starling to the FBI? Yes? No. To have spotted Lecter in a chance meeting at a hotel was one thing. To have spotted both the murderer and the vanished presumed murder victim in one lucky go strained credulity. Let them discover their own errant former agent for themselves.  
  
Dr. Doemling went over his plans in his dry, plodding academician's way, casting all into a mental outline.  
  
One: Go to the Four Seasons and have a drink in the bar, making sure to be memorable.  
  
Two: Wait an hour or two longer; let Lecter and his trollop get back to their hotel and get nice and snug and settled in for the night BEFORE the authorities would come.  
  
Three: Drive over to the FBI field office and spill the whole concocted story.  
  
Four: Pay an unexpected visit to Ms. Margot at dawn, when she would be most off guard, and come to initial terms.  
  
Of course, item number four on his agenda appealed to him most. The possibilities were virtually endless. There was a decent university right here in Las Vegas, come to think of it . . .  
  
It might be a good idea to stay close to the Verger menage from now on.  
  
October 16th, Monday, 1:00 AM, Summerlin  
  
Starling and Lecter were saying goodnight to their hostesses, Ingram and Verger. They were gathered at the open front door of the large home, all four hovering on the threshold.  
  
Baby Michael had been put to bed hours ago, and many of Margot and Judy's other guests had already gone home. Many parties in Las Vegas go on all night long and into the next day, but a party for a new baby is a more family oriented affair. Almost all those guests who were staying at the house, such as young Franklin and his foster family, and Judy's platoon of relatives, had already sought their rooms and their beds.  
  
So the two couples had a little peace and quiet for their good-byes.  
  
"So, Tuesday, then, right?" Margot was saying. "You'll meet us for drinks at that lounge on the lagoon at Treasure Island, okay?"  
  
The four had agreed to get together for an evening of guided sight-seeing on Tuesday night. Margot's first suggestion had been that they take in a hockey game at the Thomas and Mack, since hockey was the city's primary obsession. But no games were scheduled until Friday, and Lecter and Starling were leaving Las Vegas on Thursday morning.  
  
"You guys'll love the lagoon," Judy said, snickering a little. "A pirate ship attacks a British clipper and sinks it! Cannonades and Pina Coladas. Only in Las Vegas."  
  
"And then we'll take you over to Siegfried and Roy's place!" Margot added. She knew the two famous Vegas magicians socially from her various philanthropic activities in the Las Vegas gay community. "It's unbelievable. They let those big cats of theirs run around the place like house kitties! The shedding that goes on!"  
  
"We'll look forward to that, I'm sure," Dr. Lecter said, only half joking. He quite liked big cats.  
  
Clarice stepped forward and impulsively hugged Judy. It was something of a departure for her; she was generally a reserved person, not much given to such displays of affection. But it was virtually impossible not to like Judy Ingram.  
  
"You do nice work, Ms. Ingram. He's beautiful. And I've got a feeling you're gonna be a world class Mommy, too."  
  
Margot smiled fondly at her beloved. "Of course she is. She's been mothering ME for years."  
  
Dr. Lecter held out Clarice's coat for her as he spoke to Margot and Judy. "Thank you both for a very pleasant evening. This was . . . an uncommon experience for us, as I'm sure you might imagine."  
  
There was no need for any explanation. All four of them understood exactly what he meant.  
  
"Yes, thank you," Clarice added to Margot.  
  
Margot laughed. "For us too, in a way. It's been . . . nice. So, are we even yet, Doc? Have you forgiven me for Las Vegas?"  
  
"It's possible that we are approaching parity, Margot, but I believe I may NEVER forgive you for Las Vegas. And don't call me 'Doc'."  
  
They all laughed, and Starling and Lecter stepped outside. The limo Margot had sent for them at their hotel waited in the circular drive.  
  
Amid many more good nights, and thanks, and recapitulations of their plans for Tuesday night, Starling and Lecter got into their car.  
  
Margot and Judy watched as the limo pulled away, and was swallowed by the dark desert night.  
  
Monday, 1:00 AM, Las Vegas FBI Field Office  
  
"His face is a little different, I think he's had some plastic surgery. But I recognized the voice beyond any doubt," Dr. Doemling was saying. "And I'm certain he's staying at the hotel."  
  
It was the first completely truthful statement he had made since he'd arrived at this office, half an hour earlier.  
  
At twelve thirty, he walked into the office and the reception area. He'd introduced himself, showed his credentials, and told an abbreviated version of the little fairy story he'd concocted to a bored low level agent who'd been stuck with overnight desk duty.  
  
He'd decided in advance that he must appear rattled to the officers, as anyone who'd just come from such a frightening chance encounter would be. It hadn't been difficult to convey a sense of nervousness, he'd found. Not a bit. After all, he was in the process of doing great harm to Hannibal Lecter, a man as notorious for his vindictiveness as for his murderous viciousness. If anything went wrong . . .  
  
But nothing would go wrong. Lecter would be dead or safely in custody before this night was through. And from there, Dr. Doemling's life and prospects would take a radically different direction.  
  
At a quarter to one, he had been repeating a more detailed version of his story to a brace of mid-level agents in a small inner office. Hastily pulled case files and copies of old photos littered the desk, and Doemling could almost hear the sound of the hounds, beginning to bay.  
  
Now, at one o'clock, he was in a spacious executive office, telling the money version of his story to the Special Agent in Charge of the office and his second in command. SAC Edgar Riley and Deputy SAC Frank Ortega darted glances at one another as Doemling made each spurious revelation, and a tape machine recorded every lying word.  
  
The apprehension of a high profile fugitive like Lecter would be a certain career-maker for these agents. The electric emotional crackle of extreme self-interest filled the large, well appointed room.  
  
"And you're certain he didn't recognize you?" SAC Riley asked, for the third time. He was obviously worried that Lecter, had he recognized Doemling, might already have bolted. "You said you questioned him in Baltimore?"  
  
"He was catatonic at the time," Dr. Doemling lied. "No, I'm certain he wouldn't have recognized me, even if he had seen me. But he didn't. I got out of there as soon as I realized who I was seeing. And came straight here."  
  
"You didn't go to the police?" Ortega asked, again.  
  
"Gentlemen," Doemling said, using his dry, scholarly, pedant's voice. "I've studied this man. I've seen his case files, his correspondence, every book and drawing and artifact from his cell in Baltimore. I've published on the subject. I mean to say - I have more than the average layman's understanding of him, and I know exactly how dangerous he is. This is NOT a job for the Las Vegas police force. We cannot afford mistakes. I came straight here."  
  
Dr. Doemling watched as Riley and Ortega exchanged a satisfied glance. The police might be brought in, indeed, would very probably HAVE to be brought in. A room to room search of the hotel might well prove necessary, and one FBI field office could hardly summon the large numbers of officers needed for such an undertaking. But the running of the operation, and the credit for the "collar', would go to these men.  
  
And this pleased them both greatly.  
  
As it pleased Dr. Doemling.  
  
The hounds were almost in full cry now. Soon they'd slip their leads and the pack would be off, and the hunt would begin in earnest.  
  
Monday, 1:30 AM, Four Seasons, Room 328  
  
Starling and Lecter were standing on their little balcony, enjoying the nippy clarity of the high desert night, sipping at small glasses of brandy, and recapping the evening's events.  
  
The world seemed very quiet to them in this moment, even in the twenty-four hour city of Las Vegas. They stood side by side, not quite touching, both gazing out at the landscaped courtyard and the dark sky beyond.  
  
"Are you still sorry we came to Las Vegas, Clarice?" Dr. Lecter was asking. "Do you still believe it was hubris that motivated the trip?"  
  
"No and yes," Clarice answered, and sipped at her glass. He'd put the right answers to the right questions. They'd developed an efficient verbal shorthand in the course of their first year together, a convenient intimacy that they both enjoyed.  
  
"But I . . . really enjoyed the party," she added. "It was strange, though, somehow . . . "  
  
"A hospitable setting. Old friends, and new beginnings. A normal evening out, just like any of millions of couples might enjoy. But an exotic divertissement, for us. Perhaps that's why it seemed strange to you."  
  
"Ye-es," she said, somewhat doubtfully. "That's a part of it, I guess . . . "  
  
"An active social life. Friends and acquaintances. It's one thing I fear I cannot give you, in this peculiar new life that we've made from scratch, as it were. A lack that perhaps you've begun to feel."  
  
She turned slightly, so that she could look directly into his eyes.  
  
"No, we don't get out that much. No social life. Just emeralds and love and learning and stupendous sex and beauty and the best of everything and hope and laughter and play and belonging and everything else that counts. Never think I regret ANY of my choices. Do you understand? Never think that."  
  
He smiled, satisfied. "Such severity . . . "  
  
"You need a good scolding every now and then. I'd take a switch to you too, if I wasn't afraid to."  
  
He laughed. "Yes, I do. Need scolding. I tend to become . . . difficult, if left unchecked. But you are quite right, I don't think I'd bend to the dreaded switch without making some effort to defend myself. You are, of course, welcome to try sometime. We might enjoy that."  
  
They both smiled then, a shared, private amusement. They played many games, in and out of the bedroom, and all of their games were fun.  
  
Clarice gazed again out into the night, and gazed inwardly into her memory.  
  
"My great-grandma used to make her switches out of willow wands," she murmured, almost dreamily. "All us kids were terrified of her. Those willow- switches of hers stung like crazy."  
  
She shivered a little, both from the memory of expertly wielded willow switches, and from the chill autumnal bite in the air. And, perhaps, from the touch of some cool, ghostly breeze of foreboding, of which she consciously knew nothing.  
  
"It's getting cold," she said, and shivered again.  
  
Dr. Lecter put his drink down on the balustrade and moved to stand behind her. Perhaps he felt that same icy, supernatural draft. He put his arms around her from behind and pulled her backwards into himself, as though he were a living cloak she could don against any chill.  
  
"Here. Is this better?" he asked, mouth close to her ear.  
  
She relaxed into the offered warmth. "Of course," she answered, her smile clearly audible in her voice. "Much, much better."  
  
They stood that way for a time, silently, and then he bent her slightly backwards and directed her gaze upwards with a gentle hand under her chin.  
  
"Look, Clarice. There's Orion. Can you see it? Orion the Hunter."  
  
"Our stars in common. I can barely make it out. Just the belt. You pointed it out to me that first time we . . . do you remember that?"  
  
She felt, rather than heard, the ironic chuckle that moved through his chest and belly, pressed close behind her.  
  
"No, Clarice, I've completely forgotten."  
  
He went on, punctuating each phrase with kisses to her ears, throat, cheek and nape, duplicating precisely the exact order of each his kisses and caresses on that first occasion they had broken down the last of the barriers and come together after so many hungry years.  
  
"Every sound, every gesture, every subtle fragrance and minute movement, every sight, every touch, every last little thing you said or did, all this I have no recollection of at all."  
  
That time merged for them into this time, and they existed, momentarily, in a timeless continuum of love beyond hope or question or reason, separate from and inviolate to the world and all its troubles.  
  
It would be almost the last moment of peace or contentment they would know.  
  
Monday, 2:00 AM, Four Seasons, Front Desk  
  
SAC Ed Riley was in the small office behind the front desk of the exclusive hotel, scanning recent credit slips and register pages, consulting photocopied handwriting samples, looking for some clue that might tell him where, in this large hotel, an ill-famed monster was lurking.  
  
He'd put his own agents, in plain clothes and two-man teams, at each of the building exits. Ortega was out front at the desk, making certain that those hotel staffers who were aware of the FBI's presence were kept quiet and continued to work normally. Lecter was notoriously easy to spook, and could vanish as well as any self-respecting wraith. Riley wanted no departure from routine or unguarded word to inadvertently warn the fugitive.  
  
He was not having much luck with the receipts, and this frustrated him. Although he had no way of knowing it, Starling and Lecter had developed an ironclad habit, early on in their association, of having her sign all documents that might potentially come under scrutiny. There were no samples of her handwriting on file. This small habitual caution on their part had put SAC Riley in a bit of a quandary.  
  
He had not, as yet, informed the Las Vegas PD of the impending apprehension of an FBI fugitive in their jurisdiction. Nor had he informed any of his own superiors. And he hoped to keep it that way, until Lecter was either in custody or dead as a result of resisting arrest, and all the credit for the arrest had devolved squarely onto him and his own office. After that, any leftover interdepartmental pique would become moot in the media storm that would ensue.  
  
But it was beginning to look like they would have to search the rooms door to door to find the bastard. And his own men were stretched dangerously thin for that.  
  
Take the risk, and try the search with his own resources? God knew, if Lecter got away due to inadequate coverage, his own career would be as dead as any of Lecter's victims. Bring in the police? Maybe. They had the warm bodies to cover the doors and back up the canvassing. And, in the event things went bad, say, if Lecter killed innocent bystanders or worse, managed to flee, the blame could be spread around, perhaps even completely pushed off on the local police department.  
  
But it would be better by far to find the correct room and take Lecter down quickly and quietly and without any outside help. That would be the best.  
  
Riley continued, for the moment, to search the hotel records for a single signature in a distinctive copperplate hand.  
  
Monday, 2:15 AM, Summerlin  
  
Judy Ingram and Margot Verger were sitting up in the king sized bed they shared, preparing for sleep and talking over the successful party they'd just thrown.  
  
They'd agreed that it had been a smashing success, and that everyone had appeared to have a good time. They'd agreed that the caterers they'd hired had done a particularly good job, and deserved a cash bonus and a recommendation for their efforts. They'd agreed that they too had both had fun. And they'd agreed that it had been a lot more work than either of them had ever expected it would be, and that Judy's feet were killing her.  
  
"You pushed a little too hard tonight, baby," Margot commiserated, and pulled Judy's aching extremities into her lap. "Let's see these poor little feeties. I bet I can make them feel better."  
  
She began to massage the small feet, brown and neatly formed like the hands of their owner, with her own powerful hands. Judy sighed with relief.  
  
"Ah, that's perfect. You could go into business, Margot, I'm not kidding. Thank you."  
  
"My pleasure, ma'am. We aim to please." She bent to her task and did not see the bemused smile that crossed Judy's pleasant features.  
  
"Your . . . friend, the doctor? He seemed . . . almost nice. It was weird, meeting him. After all the stories you hear, you know, it seemed strange that he was just this quiet, elegant, polite little guy. Not breathing fire and howling at the moon at all. He was funny, too. And he really loves that woman."  
  
Margot's massaging hands stopped as she thought over these remarks.  
  
"He's really not a 'nice' guy, Judy. Not by any stretch of the imagination. That quiet manner is deceptive. Provoked, he is absolutely vicious, the single most violent person I've ever known. And we'll probably never have a more dangerous person in this house. At least, I hope we won't."  
  
"But you like him anyway, don't you?"  
  
"Yeah . . . yeah, I do. He is fun, in his way. You know he helped me when I needed it most, when I was younger. And he helped me again later, too, last year. Even though I wouldn't help him then, when HE needed it most. Later, I felt bad about that, a little. And he never held it against me. But he doesn't judge things like other people do. His standards are completely different from anybody's. Weirdest man alive. But you're right about Starling, I think."  
  
"Now THAT'S a weird thing. Former FBI agent, serial killer at large. Who thought of that pairing? By any kind of conventional rules, they ought to be trying to kill each other. But anyone can see how well their thing works."  
  
"Maybe that's part of the 'why' it works. Because it's so outlandish. I'll tell you this . . . I've never seen him look so . . . happy. Almost makes you feel a little twitchy. It does me, anyway."  
  
Judy's eyes widened slightly at the word "twitchy". She'd almost forgotten the twitchy balding creep she'd seen in the great room earlier in the evening, snooping through the christening gifts. Doemling, he'd said his name was. Dr. Everett Doemling.  
  
She opened her mouth to ask Margot if she had ever heard that name . . .  
  
Monday, 2:30 AM, Four Seasons, Room 328  
  
Starling and Lecter had taken their earlier conversation inside, and were conversing now in the eloquent and carnal physical language that, together, over time, they'd devised. Words were not exchanged, but the syntax of movement and counter-movement told all, the grammar of fierce mutual joy was articulated, and the cadence had grown frenzied as they approached the main argument of the discourse.  
  
They were moments away from the climax of the nonverbal discussion when the phone shrilled from the nightstand beside the bed and startled them both into immediate stillness.  
  
They exchanged a single, knowing look, all the intense physical transports of the previous moments completely and instantaneously forgotten.  
  
No one other than Margot Verger knew how to reach them at this number. And she would never call unless there was an emergency.  
  
It was trouble. They knew it beyond any hope of a doubt. Likely bad trouble, because, for them, really bad trouble was always just around the corner.  
  
They listened together, staring into each other's eyes as they waited, and the phone rang a second time. Not a mistake, then, not a wrong number.  
  
Slowly, as though very, very tired, Dr. Lecter reached over the stilled form of Clarice and picked up the receiver. He silently put it to his ear and listened.  
  
********************************************************* 


	8. Chapter Eight

Chapter Eight  
  
As Dr. Lecter listened to Margot's harried voice over the phone and took up the burden of the full weight of her heavy news, he entered that frigid, strangely disconnected state of amoral, razor-edged readiness that was his most elemental response to threat. It was more an innate aspect of self than a skill or habit. He had never consciously sought this frozen, ever- ravenous vacuum at his psyche's core, although he had often found himself there, when the proper set of circumstances arose.  
  
Margot's words slowed, and he began to perceive large temporal gaps between each of them. His vision took on an unnatural clarity. His awareness of scents intensified. His body became very still, the muscles and sinews subtly drawing and pulling inward like a crossbow winding, spring tension ready to explode outward at need. He felt a vague tingling sensation in his hands and the tips of his fingers, and, unaware, flexed them strongly, three times in rapid succession. His respiration slowed. His blood pressure dipped.  
  
His mind ticked through thousands of discrete calculations in the space of moments.  
  
His heart emptied of every last vestige of human kindness or compunction.  
  
He motioned to Clarice, staring at him with stricken eyes.  
  
"I've been identified," he said to her, words clipped and devoid of affect. "Go to the balcony. Check that exit across the courtyard. See what's there. Don't be seen."  
  
He listened to Margot, and at the same time, on another mental track, raced into the Hall of Architecture in his memory palace and set out all his rough sketches of the layout of the hotel, its parking garage, the grid of city streets in the immediate vicinity, and maps of the city as a whole, with outlying areas as well as Interstate routes in and out. On yet another track, he was sifting through his memories of every face he had seen at Margot's earlier, and re-examining every impression or nuance of perception he had experienced there. On a fourth track, he was formulating and discarding one course of action after another, each designed to fit a different set of contingencies. On a fifth track, he was watching the pale, nude form of Clarice rising from the bed and walking swiftly toward the sitting room door.  
  
Before she'd had time to reach the door, his unique memory had locked on a pesky hovering presence at the edge of his first exchange with Margot at the party, some persistent suppliant to Margot Verger's wealth and influence whom he had foolishly dismissed. That would have been Doemling.  
  
Recognition must have been quick. He knew he'd made quite an impression on the fussy, amusingly venomous academic, years before. One could assume the entire conversation between Clarice, himself, Margot and Judy, had been overheard. That had been at about seven o'clock. Why hadn't the police arrived then, at the party?  
  
Blackmail. Doemling must intend to pressure Margot with his knowledge of their association. Excellent. At least one favorable circumstance. The man would have lied about where the identification took place, and would have allowed time to pass before going to the authorities. And he would return to Margot, in time, likely soon, to make his demands.  
  
The familiar biting sting of profound rage, pouring like a black tide out of his center and into his blood, came to him. Dr. Lecter fully intended to renew his own acquaintance with the scholarly professor at that prospective conference with Margot. Oh, yes. Provided he could find a way out of the current dilemma.  
  
Clarice reentered the bedroom, moving quickly and economically.  
  
"Two bureau agents," she said, face white and rigid. "No markers or insignia. Both armed. Equipped with radios. Two uniforms arrived while I watched. PD. Was it the party? Is that where they made us?"  
  
"Never mind. Uniforms? Just arrived? And you're certain about the agents?"  
  
"The shoes," she said, with a wretched, jagged little smile. "I recognize those FBI clunkers. Who saw us?"  
  
"Hush, please, Clarice. I'm not yet certain that YOU have been identified. Let me talk to Margot now."  
  
Clarice nodded and turned away, toward her things in the closet.  
  
"Margot," Lecter was saying. "Do this for me - do you have call conferencing with your phone service? . . . good, dial the hotel switchboard, ask for the front desk, chatter aimlessly for a moment, then ask if there are any messages for Norma Meyer . . . no, I'll be listening, I need to hear how they sound . . . no, then I want you to hang up . . . I'll contact you when I . . . well, I certainly hope it won't be via the evening news, but you never know . . . Margot, that's not important now, please just do as I ask . . . "  
  
Dr. Lecter covered the mouthpiece of the receiver with his palm and listened intently as Margot followed his instructions to the letter. No strain in the switchboard operator's voice. Good. Definite sound of tension in the voice at the desk. Very well, FBI presence there. No spike of recognition or additional tension at the mention of "Norma Meyer" or her room number. VERY good.  
  
So. The FBI was running the operation, then. The Las Vegas police had been enlisted just recently to help make a door to door room search, armed with passkeys. The search would take time. But the exits were well guarded. Still . . .  
  
Had Clarice been identified? Unlikely. Even if Doemling had recognized her, he would not have mentioned her to the FBI, Dr. Lecter reasoned. Bent on blackmail, Doemling would have had to recast the actual circumstances of their meeting into a chance encounter. Here at the hotel, probably. Clarice Starling, supposedly a year dead, was an unlikely detail that would have made his story seem implausible. He would have left it out.  
  
The room search, then, would concentrate on solitary male guests, to begin with. That would give them some more time too.  
  
A potential design began to assemble itself in his mind. As it took form, as he began to see it from multiple angles, and as he began to divine the details of what they would have to do, he shuddered faintly, and he felt the first small stirrings of revulsion.  
  
The sound of a fresh clip being socked into a pistol severed all his thoughts cleanly, like a well-honed sword slicing through flesh.  
  
He turned his head slightly to see Clarice.  
  
She was loading the cut down .45 she most preferred, and had set her extra clips, plus a back-up weapon, on the bed. There was a hard shine in her wonderful amber eyes, composed of equal parts force of will and unshed tears. Her slender, smoothly muscled body was poised, weight slightly shifted to her right, beside the bed. She was still entirely nude.  
  
Even before she'd thought to clothe herself, she had looked to her weapons.  
  
The truest hallmark of the born warrior, to array oneself for battle solely in bravery. Just so had Michelangelo's young David gone upon the field to meet his own foes, and with as little hope.  
  
She had never appeared more magnificent to him than she did at this moment, a palely gleaming ivory idol. Her exquisite beauty staggered him. Her courage humbled him. Her commitment to him, love and acceptance that he had never earned and did not truly warrant, impaled his heart.  
  
He would NEVER give her up. Never. Not ever. Not to fortune, not to death. Never.  
  
Not while there was still a way out. A hard route to take, but an open one.  
  
"Clarice, we cannot survive a direct confrontation," he said, quietly. He put out a hand to her. "Come here. Please. Sit down here. Listen to me."  
  
After a long moment of searching scrutiny, she did as he asked.  
  
"Hannibal, we can't get out. Four men on an inside door. What do you think they'll have on the main exits? They have us. We're done. Don't ask me to save myself. I wont do it. We can't get out."  
  
Her voice sounded flat, dead. He could barely stand the sound of his own name, so rarely on her lips, spoken in that pallid, lifeless monotone. But he would have to withstand worse assaults to the senses and sensibilities, before he was done, tonight.  
  
"There isn't much time, Clarice. Listen to me. Yes, you're right, we can't get out. Not both of us."  
  
"NO! I told you, no! I will not leave you here. We knew this day would come, we always knew that. I won't do - "  
  
He put his hands on her upper arms and shook her, slightly, fingers deliberately digging into her skin, hurting, making bruises. Her own shock at the abuse stilled her vehement objections. He had never before offered her such an unkind touch.  
  
"No, Clarice, I'm not asking you to leave me here. I'm going to leave YOU here."  
  
"What? I . . . I don't understand."  
  
"We can't get out together. But alone, moving quietly, I'll be able to slip by. I've gotten through tighter nets."  
  
"And killed five to do it, the first time. No. We can - "  
  
"Clarice," he interrupted, and glanced at her pistol, held like an unnatural, lethal child in her lap. "How many would have fallen to your expert aim, tonight? How well could you have lived with that? But you didn't really expect to have to, did you? Live with it?"  
  
"No. No, I didn't. You won't go back to your prison. And I won't go back to mine. I won't argue with you about this."  
  
"Listen to me. No one is going to die. No one is going to any prison. We've preserved the illusion that you were dead for a year. Now we'll create a different illusion. And you'll help me. You're trained in forensic science; you'll help me stage a story. An ugly story for the police, the Bureau, the media, to swallow whole and savor and gloat over."  
  
He stopped, and waited for her to understand what he was proposing.  
  
"So then . . . I'm not dead? Not dead, but kidnapped. By you." Dawning comprehension was in her eyes, and the first bite of renewed hope, and renewed fear with it, brought life back into her voice.  
  
"Yes. I've held you for a year, against your will. A season in the Underworld, like Persephone. I've drugged you, hurt you, abused you . . . " he paused, having to control his own disgust before he could go on. "Violated you in every possible, perverted way, body and mind. Unimaginable torment. It's a miracle you survived. The tabloids will love it."  
  
He was satisfied to see the gears beginning to mesh in her trained investigator's mind. He could almost discern her scanning through remembered case files, revisiting recalled crime scenes, recreating victim interviews.  
  
"It won't work. We're talking systematic abuse. Over a long period of time. The long term physical evidence won't be there. We can't fake that."  
  
"We won't have to. We'll make the immediate scene vile enough to shock for now. Afterwards, you'll use the media. You'll get on television and whine and weep and shudder and play the victimized heroine. You'll embarrass the FBI fools that left you to 'a fate worse than death' until they'll avoid you like a plague carrier. You'll stay out of protective custody. You'll tell your nightmare story every night like Scheherazade and no one will ever doubt you because no one will really want to. And you'll stay visible, where I can see you. When the time comes, when it's safe, I'll come for you. And then we'll go home, Clarice."  
  
"It's too fantastic. Why wouldn't you have just killed me? No one will believe it."  
  
"EVERYONE will believe it," he hissed, and then laughed, a hideous, broken- glass laugh that was dreadful to hear. "'Hannibal the Cannibal'? Is there ANY manner of depravity such a 'monster' would shrink from? Clarice, my story has been at the top of the charts for years. Death, blood, unspeakable crimes. Boffo, as they say. But there's always been one important element lacking . Now we'll add it."  
  
"Sex," she said, in the same disgusted tone she might have said "filth".  
  
"Yes. People will believe anything, Clarice, as long as it's what they want to hear. As long as it's what they expect. You'll see that I'm right, in the next few weeks."  
  
"Behavioral Science won't buy it. They have dozens of profiles on you. This isn't your MO."  
  
"That won't matter. The whole bureau will be twisting in a public relations cataclysm, the moment the story of your 'ordeal' gets out. You'll parade your wounds before the public and they'll be burning FBI directors in effigy in the streets. Behavioral Science will never dare to breathe a word against you."  
  
He was right. They both knew it. The Bureau had abandoned her totally, set her out as bait and then left her to whatever fate might come. After Ruby Ridge and Richard Jewell, the FBI could ill-afford another public opinion shitstorm. They'd keep quiet, no matter what suspicions a few egg-headed profilers in the basement at Quantico might have.  
  
They stared into each other's eyes, mutually gauging the resolve each saw in the other's gaze.  
  
"All right," she said, finally. "It's our best bet. What do we do?"  
  
"You tell me. You're the forensics expert. You've seen sex crimes?"  
  
"Too many. You'll have to hurt me. Inside and out. Can you do that?"  
  
"I don't know. We'll get to that. What else?"  
  
She rose, almost unconsciously, so deep was she in thought.  
  
"We'll have to sweep these rooms. Too many signs of consensual cohabitation all around."  
  
"We're running out of time . . . "  
  
"So we'll hurry. You go through this room. I'll do the bath and the sitting room. All right?"  
  
She left the room without waiting for an answer, intent on scouring any visible trace of her own ongoing well-being from these rooms. He moved to his own appointed search of their bedroom, reflecting, not without a certain amount of dismay, on how terribly easy it was to erase all evidence of happiness, if such was what one set out to do.  
  
It didn't take long at all. The suite was swept clean of any signs of tenderness or sentimentality in minutes. They met back in the bedroom once the sweep had been accomplished. It was time to get dressed.  
  
Clarice looked at the bed, at her small personal arsenal.  
  
"Can you get these guns out of here when you go?" she asked. "You'll have to ditch them well away from the hotel, you know. They can't be found."  
  
"Understood. What more?"  
  
"Restraints. It's a common element in scenes like this. What do we have on hand?"  
  
The wording of her question cut into their hurried concentration and stood out of context in its own macabre absurdity. Proper bondage restraints were not exactly the same thing as a dozen eggs or a cup of sugar. They were both surprised to find themselves suddenly laughing helplessly.  
  
"I'm devastated to have failed you, Clarice. I haven't been anywhere near deviant enough, it seems. You must have been very bored. What about silk scarves?"  
  
She was slipping an ivory satin nightgown on over her head, manic giggling slightly muffled in the creamy fabric.  
  
"A bit tame for this scenario, aside from the fetish value. Got any duct tape?"  
  
He drew himself up with deliberately comic, huffy hauteur. He was one of the very few individuals in all the world who could manage to look impossibly haughty while completely naked.  
  
"Clarice, I am deeply insulted. How can you have the effrontery to ask? I ALWAYS have duct tape."  
  
The humor of the moment was grim and utterly grotesque, but it helped, nevertheless.  
  
Amidst their second burst of mutual, horrified laughter, Clarice swiftly crossed the room to him and closed her arms around his bare shoulders. The bruises he'd put on her arms were already beginning to show, and tears were glittering, almost ready to spill, in her eyes. But she was smiling, anyway.  
  
"Please kiss me. Right now. I need it. What's next is the hard part."  
  
A request no true gentleman could ever deny a lady. He bowed his head to comply.  
  
He broke the kiss when he tasted the brine of her tears, falling at last.  
  
"Oh, Clarice." He knew of nothing better to say.  
  
"Okay. That helps. That's better. I love you. You do know that?"  
  
"Yes . . . yes, I do."  
  
"Be certain. You don't see things like other people do. You do understand that I love you?"  
  
"I'll never understand, Clarice. But I believe you."  
  
"Well. We're all right then. God, this is so . . . gross. You'll want to cut this nightgown up some. Again, it's a fetish. Use the Harpy, they'll recognize the cut pattern," tears were streaming down her cheeks, unnoticed. "And you'll have to mark my face. Lots of people saw me at Margot's. If I'm going on television, I've got to look . . .different. Unrecognizable. And I'll need a lot more bruises and you'll have to - "  
  
He'd cut off her hurried, unbearable instructions with a single, sharp, closed-fisted blow to her right cheekbone. The feel of the delicate bone crumpling and thin skin splitting under his knuckles would haunt him in his dreams, he knew. She'd have dropped like a stone if she hadn't caught her. She hung limply in his arms.  
  
So small, really. She weighed practically nothing. Strange how very small she seemed to him.  
  
Throughout all of the terrible things he would do now, he wanted her unconscious. For the duration. Were she alert and aware, the pain of the injuries and violations he was about to inflict would have undone them both. He knew very well that he would never have been able to go on.  
  
There would be pain when she came to. The broken cheekbone alone would hurt very badly. He carried her to the bed and gently set her down on it, then raised both her eyelids to check her pupils. All was well. There would be a great deal of swelling and discoloration. At least half of the makeshift "mask" she would wear for the press was made.  
  
He bent to kiss her mouth again, softly, one more time, because he didn't know when he would taste these lips again. Then he bit into the left side of her lower lip and chin and broke the skin. He tasted blood and for the first time in his life, the well-known, often greedily relished taste nearly gagged him.  
  
But the asymmetrical swelling this injury would cause on the left side of her face would complete her disguise. He fervently hoped there wouldn't be a scar.  
  
Two bites to her scalp caused very little actual damage, but released showy amounts of blood. He raised her limp torso from the bed, supporting the back of her head with one hand, and shook, twice, sharply enough to cause gruesome blood splatters on the pillows and counterpane and her gown.  
  
He carefully lowered her back to the pillows and sat up, very still, watching his cherished Clarice bleed, and weathering the blackest, most excoriating wave of abject self-loathing he had ever known.  
  
But there was still more to do. The vile tale he hoped to convey to their pursuers was only half told. He could not shrink from these things.  
  
Hannibal Lecter was a man who could will himself to any excess, no matter how intolerable. It was both his strength and his tragedy that he was such. The memory palace, arcane repository of all his vast stores of acquired knowledge and frequent mental refuge, beckoned benignly to his sickened spirit.  
  
He entered that ordered, mostly bright inner world gratefully and left his body behind to do its grisly work, untenanted.  
  
The work didn't really take very long, all things considered.  
  
Later, centuries and ages later, it seemed to him, Dr. Lecter, fully dressed as Lawrence Perkins and armed with Clarice's weapons as well as his own, stood as still and cold as a graven stone image in the bedroom and considered the scene.  
  
There were easily identifiable traces of himself everywhere, but there was nothing to indicate that Clarice had ever been allowed the slightest autonomy or mercy or dignity in this suite. He consulted his watch. Five to three.  
  
How very odd. The whole appalling series of events had taken no more than twenty-five minutes, from the first strained syllables of Margot's voice on the phone to this.  
  
He forced himself to examine Clarice a final time before he would leave.  
  
Her pupils responded normally and symmetrically to light. She was bound with yards of duct tape, at her wrists and ankles and elbows, splayed on the bloodied bedclothes in her cut white gown. He had not dared to tape her mouth, for fear of accidental aspiration or asphyxiation. Her lovely face was completely obscured by bruising and edema and dried blood. He'd signed her precious flesh with more bites, patterns of them on her breasts and inner thighs, each just enough to break the skin, none, he believed, deep enough to scar. He'd left his genetic calling card in her inner vaults, and had also left brutal evidence of a hard, unloving entry to these vaults.  
  
Five minutes earlier, he had called the city desk at the Las Vegas Sun and had given the night editor an anonymous (but highly convincing) tip about a high profile fugitive and an impending arrest.  
  
There was nothing else to do. The scene was set, the bleak little apocryphal tale was told. Now he must leave her to her own part in the performance. He hoped she would not find her assigned role as hateful as he had his. Although he very much feared that she would.  
  
He did not wish to look at her like this any further. He silently left the room.  
  
There was a small bundle of evidence that they had judged the investigators should not see at the door to the suite. Greeting cards, notes, her birth control pills, day old roses, some of her growing collection of emeralds, her handbag, the clothes she had worn as Norma Meyer. He'd tied the pitifully small collection of things up in a hotel laundry bag.  
  
He also had his shoes, socks, and several clips of ammunition in there. He himself was dressed in an outer layer of pajamas and bathrobe, only slippers on his feet. Suitable street clothes were hidden beneath this layer. His shaggy "Larry" hair was mussed, as though he'd just awakened from a hard sleep. He practiced blinking Larry's mild blue eyes blearily a few times.  
  
He took up the bundle and walked out the door, as silently as a serpent sliding over silk. Anyone seeing him would have taken him for a tired, half asleep hotel guest stumbling around the halls, looking for the laundry chute. He would use this dazed persona to get to the incinerator, located in the hotel basement, and there he would dispose of everything that could be burned. Whatever was left would go with him. And then he would find a lightly manned exit to watch, and he would wait.  
  
When Clarice was discovered, a flurry of exited activity would ensue. There would be ambulances and EMT's, and there would be newspaper reporters and photographers at first, and soon other legions of media representatives. A struggle for control of the crime scene would erupt between the FBI and the Las Vegas Police, and swarms of CSI techs from both law enforcement agencies would arrive. There would be frantic comings and goings, and dozens of warm bodies and uniforms would be hurrying to and fro. There would be chaos and confusion, and garbled and contradictory messages would pipe from all the radios. There would be fear and chagrin and laying of blame and outrage.  
  
And in all this frenzy, he was certain, he would be able to slip through the net. Easily.  
  
He would need a car. The silly blue Aspire that his auto-loving Clarice had so despised would be compromised now. He would need an identity. He could access several via phone. He would need cash and he would need information and he would need a safe place to wait out the inevitable searches and attention. He would be busy.  
  
But first, before anything else, he would find his way to Margot Verger's home in Summerlin and he would wait for Dr. Doemling to arrive.  
  
He had a seminar planned for THAT learned gentleman that would transcend the known limits of suffering. Las Vegas had at least one feature that Dr. Lecter much admired. It was a city surrounded on all sides by open, empty desolation. A handy landscape for complete, uninterrupted privacy. And, of course, for the convenient disposal of earthly remains.  
  
There were always compensations.  
  
************************************************************ 


	9. Chapter Nine

Chapter Nine  
  
Monday, 3:30 AM, Four Seasons, Room 328  
  
Clarice Starling's first thought, as she floated up out of the dark and into consciousness, was that she felt like she'd been hit by a truck.  
  
Her skin hurt. Her bones hurt. Her breasts hurt. There was a dreadful burning ache at the fork of her legs and her face felt like a swelling balloon filled with hot, pulsing blood. By God, for some reason, it felt like even her HAIR hurt. And, as if all that wasn't enough, she itched all over. Probably from dried blood.  
  
Hoo-boy, she thought, strangely amused. What a genius I am! I actually volunteered to have one of the most violent men in the world tie me up and beat the living crap out of me. Think I'll join Mensa. Just as soon as they take the body cast off.  
  
Good job, sweetheart, wherever you are! I'm a wreck. And thanks for punching me out before you really got going. That was considerate.  
  
He'd certainly done some damn fine work. She hoped it hadn't been too terrible for him, although she greatly feared that it probably had been. But she would have bet the farm that as bad as she felt, she probably LOOKED at least ten times worse.  
  
She actually would have smiled then, had she not become aware of the sound of soft, shocked male voices in the room with her. Deliberately keeping the volume way down. So. She had been discovered, and soon these officers, these men, would touch her, try to rouse her. Even before the paramedics arrived. They would have their questions, thousands of them.  
  
Uh-huh. Almost time for her to go on-stage and begin to play out her part.  
  
Over the course of her first year in the company of Dr. Lecter, she had learned much of the theory and practice of the mnemonic system called the "memory palace" from him. Her practical nature had seized on the advantages of such a system at once, and her own memory palace had been under construction for some time. She had stored a great deal of information in the completed portions already, and would store more as time passed.  
  
But she had also learned from Dr. Lecter the less conventional uses of such a system, far beyond the mere storage and convenient retrieval of facts. She too had learned the knack of living, sometimes, within the mental walls of her own making, and her palace, like his, also offered an internal refuge from the real world.  
  
In a comfortable, sunny cottage with a view of a meadow in bloom past quaint mullioned windows, Clarice Starling sat in an antique rocker and sipped at an illusory cup of "Smart People's Tea". The famous herbal blend that had been the specialty of Ardelia Mapp's fierce little grandmother tasted godawful, but it really did seem to help stimulate thought. Even in its purely imaginary form. The various pains of her body had been left behind, as had the presence of officers in the room with her. She was alone, calm and unhurried, able to plan out the smallest details of the performance she would soon start to give.  
  
What would shock the most? What would seem most real to these officers, these men? How could she put them off-balance and keep them that way? How could she keep their questions short and lacking in detail or insight? How could she direct attention away from any discrepancy in this faked scene that she and Dr. Lecter might have overlooked in their haste?  
  
How might a woman who has just spent a year in the clutches of the Devil himself behave?  
  
Clarice sought and found the stillness at the center of herself. She finished her tea before she rose from her rocking chair and returned to the world outside her own mind.  
  
She opened her eyes to the bedroom and noticed that her right eye was apparently swollen shut. She realized that she was bound with the duct tape. She saw that her gown had been slashed, just as she'd suggested, and that one of her breasts was exposed to view, bloody bites like livid rose petals marking the pale flesh. She had the fleeting impression of four men in the room, three agents and one uniformed cop.  
  
She took a deep breath and opened her aching, swollen mouth and shrieked like Hell's own clarion.  
  
All four of the law enforcement officers in the small bedroom jumped at the terrible, shattering sound.  
  
Clarice screamed and screamed and screamed. Gentle, soothing hands touched her, and she screamed. Soft, comforting voices murmured to her, and she screamed. Hurried requests for immediate medical assistance were repeated into radios, and she screamed. The intermittent flashing of cameras recording the crime scene before it would be changed assaulted her one open eye, and she screamed. The bonds at her wrists and feet and elbows were quickly and quietly removed, and she screamed. The first simple questions were put to her, and she screamed.  
  
"It's okay, you're safe, you're all right, we're police. What's your name, honey?"  
  
She screamed.  
  
"Can you tell us your name? Do you know your name?"  
  
She screamed.  
  
"Can you sit up? Are you hurt anywhere, inside? Can you move? How many fingers am I holding up?"  
  
She screamed.  
  
"Who did this to you? Can you tell us? Who did this? Who did this?"  
  
She screamed.  
  
But, of course, they knew who had done it. Or, at least, they believed that they did.  
  
Clarice could scream no more. A sharp little pain had lodged like a jagged piece of bone in her throat. She resorted to panicked, hoarse, hysterical whispers and darted terrified glances all around herself. She flailed weakly with her newly freed arms and kicked her feet awkwardly as though she meant to run but had forgotten how.  
  
"Is he still here? Oh, God, is he here? Where is he? Where is he?" she demanded of those around her, widening her undamaged eye in a perfect semblance of stark, unseeing terror.  
  
"Where is he where is he where is he whereishewhereishewhereishe . . ."  
  
She allowed her voice to trail off into incoherent moans. She could feel pity and horror and outrage pouring off the various law enforcement officers in the room in waves. Many normal, good men, she knew, forced to confront the naked anguish of a victim of sexual assault head-on, will often feel the sting of phantom guilt themselves, regardless of their own innocence. It's as though they know or imagine they know some dreadful secret about themselves, about all men, even if they have loved and respected women all their lives.  
  
These men, Clarice saw, were cringing away from her pain as though they had somehow caused it. She saw how they averted their eyes from her naked breast as though embarrassed to be caught peeking. She saw how all their investigative training and professional detachment had deserted them, and left them just four men alone in a room with a woman who had suffered unimaginable brutality. She saw that none of them knew what to do.  
  
So far, so good, she thought, satisfied. Wow, she hurt. She briefly considered nipping back into her memory palace for another cup of tea. She had a feeling she was going to need it, and besides, all that screaming had hurt her throat. But first, one more important little thing . . .  
  
"Clarice Starling . . . " she gasped, weakly, almost inaudibly, trembling from head to toe. "I'm Clarice Starling. I . . . I used to be with the Bureau."  
  
Monday, October 16, 4:45 AM, Summerlin  
  
Dr. Doemling regarded Margot Verger closely as she stood in her doorway, one thickly muscled arm thrown across the threshold, as though to bar his entry. Silently looking back at him, pale blue eyes unreadable.  
  
She was dressed in pajamas and robe, as though she'd been in bed when he'd rung her doorbell at this unlikely hour, just as he'd expected. But her gaze was clear and intent, and her demeanor showed none of the bewildered, just-awakened confusion he had counted on.  
  
"Good morning, Ms. Verger," he'd said. "I wonder if you remember me?"  
  
"Yes. Doemling. From Baylor." There had been no hesitation or uncertainty in her answer at all. Not much visible emotion of any kind, in fact.  
  
"I'd like to discuss a mutual acquaintance with you . . . Margot. A good friend of yours, apparently, judging from what I saw here just last night. Must I mention the name?"  
  
He'd expected some denial, or perhaps a pretense of incomprehension, at least initially. But there had been none. No hostility, no anger, no fear. Nothing.  
  
"Maybe you'd better come in, Dr. Doemling," had been her only answer, and she'd stood to the side of the door with a short, curt beckoning gesture.  
  
Now he stood, watching her, trying to divine the import of her apparent calmness, and what it might mean for him.  
  
She'd been brutalized in her youth by her dead brother. It was a matter of court record. Flatness of affect was a common symptom among incest survivors. Especially in stressful situations. A learned defense response. Individuals who had sustained such childhood traumas often remained unusually susceptible to suggestion and domination well into their adult years.  
  
Perhaps this little interview he had planned might prove even easier than he'd hoped.  
  
He believed that it was careful consideration on his part that formed his next decision. But he was deluding himself. It was his greed and his narrowness and his pathetic, threadbare egotism that actually moved his feet over the threshold. He followed her inside the house.  
  
She led him down a dark hallway to the right of the door.  
  
"We'll talk in my study, Doctor. I'd rather not wake anyone."  
  
"I'm sure you wouldn't. Just as you wish . . . Margot. Perhaps a little privacy would be best while we chat."  
  
She stopped at a door and opened it, revealing a pleasant room that looked out on the large patio, furnished with a desk, office equipment, many books. French doors opened a crack to the fresh, predawn air. A single lamp burning on the desk.  
  
"Yes, privacy," she agreed, still expressionless. She made another curt waving gesture toward the study door. "After you."  
  
She was a big, powerful woman. Quite capable of doing him physical harm, should he turn his back on her and let her have an advantage. Yet, if he wished to control the course of the upcoming negotiations, he must keep the psychological upper hand, he must appear completely confident. He moved past her into the room, and was gratified to have passed her without incident, to have been proven right in his chilly little calculations.  
  
Without being invited, he chose a chair near the French doors off the patio, back to the glass. The sun would rise as they discussed the specifics of his new, improved career and lifestyle, and the early light would be in her face, while obscuring his own. Another slight, subtle advantage.  
  
She took a chair opposite to his, just as if he'd told her exactly which to take. There was a small dish of mixed nuts on an occasional table beside her. She took up a pair of walnuts, and he heard the tiny clicking sounds of the hard shells grinding against each other in her hand.  
  
A moment of tense silence unreeled in the pleasant, dimly lit room.  
  
"Well? What do you want?" Margot asked, at last.  
  
Not quite the opening tone he would have wished. Her bald directness was disconcerting, shifted the balance of power more toward her side of the court. It was very important, for all of their future dealings, that he establish the correct pattern of dominance now. She was pushing. He decided to push back.  
  
"I must say . . . Margot . . . I was surprised to see him here. So chummy, the two of you were, last night. The sick bastard did kill your brother, after all. But I suppose that rather convenient death put you in an enviable position, ultimately. All that wealth and power, all in your hands, after all those years of waiting, of being the LITTLE sister that Mason hurt so badly. Still . . . Hannibal Lecter is not the sort of person one expects to see at the top of anybody's guest list."  
  
He'd hoped to see her flinch, at least a little, at the mention of the name. But he was disappointed. She showed no visible reaction, and made no comment. The crunching of walnut shells was the only sound in the room.  
  
"The man's a mad dog, Margot. You're very wrong to trust him, no matter what little favors you may think he's done for you. He could have turned on you at any time . . . would have, in all probability. You, or Judy Ingram, or even little Michael, it wouldn't have made any difference to him. In a way, I've done you a service."  
  
"What, exactly, HAVE you done, Dr. Doemling? Did you turn him in? Speak to the police? The FBI? Will there be an official knock at my door a little later this morning?"  
  
"I thought we could keep all this between ourselves, Margot. That would be best, wouldn't it? More comfortable for all concerned?"  
  
"Who did you talk to? What did you say? If you're going to blackmail me, I'll want a full accounting of what . . . 'service' you're prepared to offer. We are discussing blackmail terms here, aren't we?"  
  
"This doesn't have to be unpleasant . . . Margot. But that's entirely up to you. I spoke to the FBI at one o'clock this morning. I gave them his hotel, and a description of his new face. I, for one, never mentioned your name. They'll have him in custody by now, of course, unless he's already dead. I somehow don't really think he'd let them take him alive, do you? But, if they did . . .you tell me, Margot. Would HE turn YOU in?"  
  
She didn't answer. Just stared at him for a time, with her pale, unwavering gaze. He began to feel vaguely unsettled. None of their exchanges, so far, had been anything like the dialogues he'd scripted earlier in the theater of his expectations.  
  
Then, Margot smiled, a cold, humorless expression that showed her teeth, but never touched her eyes. The walnuts rolling in her powerful hand cracked.  
  
"You think Hannibal Lecter killed my brother Mason, don't you, Dr. Doemling? Well, why shouldn't you? That's what everyone believes. He SAID he did it, after all. I'll tell you a little secret, though, if you'd care to hear it. Want to hear it, Dr. Doemling? Huh? Do you have ANY interest in the truth at ALL?"  
  
"What the hell are you trying to - " he started to bark, but she rolled right over him.  
  
"Do you? Want to hear it? Yes? All right, then, I'll tell you. I killed Mason myself. I stuffed a live eel down his filthy throat and waited until he drowned on his own bile while the eel chewed up his tongue. But first I shoved a cattle prod up his ass and zapped him a good one. He came like Vesuvius erupting, believe me, you should have seen it, it was something. Dr. Lecter's suggestion, if you really want to know. Worked like magic, too. Nine months later, Mikey was born. Michael HANNIBAL Verger. A family joke, you understand."  
  
Dr. Doemling would have risen from the chair he'd chosen, but a small, strong hand had suddenly fallen on his shoulder from behind, from the direction of the open French doors that he himself had put his own back to. He would have screamed, but another hand clamped over the lower half of his face with terrifying strength, squeezing his jaw shut, crushing the cartilage in his nose instantly, cutting off his air.  
  
"Good morning, Dr. Doemling," a sibilant, edged whisper in his ear. A voice he knew, and now wished, much too late, that he had never, ever recognized. "I'm so very glad to find you here."  
  
"What a silly little man you are, Dr. Doemling," Margot said, almost sadly. "What an over-reaching, naive fool."  
  
Blood from Doemling's crushed nose pooled in his throat and sinuses and choked him. He tried to move and the hand at his shoulder gripped and twisted and wrenched. A blinding, searing sheet of pain cut through him and he heard his collarbone snap as his shoulder was dislocated. He was drowning in his own blood and he couldn't scream and he didn't dare to move.  
  
"You'll be dead in a minute or two, Dr. Doemling, if I don't take my hand off your mouth," Hannibal Lecter said. "I don't want that. If I take my hand away, can I trust you not to scream? Tap once with your foot for 'yes'."  
  
Doemling felt his own foot tap at the carpet, from very far away, as though he had nothing to do with it, as though it was happening in another room, or another world.  
  
Dr. Lecter withdrew both hands and came around from behind Doemling's chair. He stood very close to Doemling, and leaned down to look into his face. He watched, head cocked at a slight angle, as Doemling crouched back in his seat and gasped for air and tried to clear the blood out of his throat.  
  
"You mustn't bleed on Margot's rug, Dr. Doemling," Lecter said quietly. "We cannot be an inconvenience to our hostess. Swallow, don't spit."  
  
Doemling watched their eyes, Lecter's and Verger's, as he struggled to find breath and swallowed blood. He saw no mercy there. Not a shred.  
  
Margot Verger's eyes were as pale and blue and remote as the October sky at noon.  
  
Lecter's were the color of blood spilled in a distant age, bright scarlet sparks wheeling in the darkened redness, unblinking, preternaturally intent. Inhuman.  
  
Doemling tried to speak, his puffed nose muffling and distorting his voice almost comically.  
  
"Margot . . . please . . . "  
  
"We'll be going, now, Dr. Doemling," Lecter interrupted. "We have much to discuss, you and I. We'll observe the sunrise together, shall we? Stand up. Do it now."  
  
"I . . . I can't," Doemling whispered, completely unmanned.  
  
His eyes were filling with tears. The third time in his life that this terrible man had made him cry. Thrice in a single lifetime. How could things have possibly gone this hideously wrong? How could this really be happening?  
  
Lecter leaned even closer into his face, close enough to kiss. Or to bite. Points of red light burned in his eyes like twin bloody constellations in a lunatic universe, cold inches away from Doemling's shrinking gaze.  
  
"You'll walk out of here with me on your own two feet, Dr. Doemling," Lecter hissed into his face. "Or I'll drag you out on ragged STUMPS. My patience has limits. You exceeded them several hours ago. Stop sniveling and stand up."  
  
Doemling rose, shakily, trying to stiffen his wobbly knees, eyes swimming. He dared not disobey, and was terribly frightened that he might fall and anger Lecter further. Strange how avidly one would seek to stay alive, even if only for a few more minutes, even if those few additional moments of life would hold only torment and terror.  
  
Strange how you could never quite believe you were really going to die.  
  
Doemling turned his head to Margot Verger, moaning at the wretched pain the movement caused to his broken clavicle.  
  
"Please," he begged her. "Please, stop him. Don't let him do this. You can't let him take me out of here. You know what he'll do to me."  
  
Margot considered. She might have been a black-robed justice in a court of the Inquisition, coolly considering a condemned penitent.  
  
"Stop him? How would I do that?" she asked, clearly not expecting an answer. "No, actually, Dr. Doemling . . . I don't really know what he'll do to you. And I don't want to. But I do know what YOU would have done to me. Me and my family."  
  
She turned to Dr. Lecter and pronounced her sentence.  
  
"He's yours. Get him out of here."  
  
Doemling moaned as Lecter's hand fell heavily upon him again, pulling and guiding him towards the door of the study, digging painfully into his injured shoulder, grinding the broken ends of his collarbone. Prodding him along like livestock in a killing pen.  
  
"Thank you, Margot," Dr. Lecter murmured from the doorway. "For everything. I'm in your debt. I won't forget it."  
  
She sighed heavily. "Come back when you're done and I'll see what I can do to help you," she said, not looking at Doemling at all. He might have been dead already. "I feel responsible for a lot of this. Let me help you. Will you do that?"  
  
He considered. "I don't hold you responsible for any of this, Margot. This isn't your fault. And you needn't feel you have to make up for Muskrat Farm now, you know. All that has been over and done a long time."  
  
"I know that. But you'll need help. Let me help you, Dr. Lecter," she repeated, and then said no more. She waited for him to decide, letting a silence broken only by the frightened, helpless weeping of Doemling take its course.  
  
"All right," he answered after a time, softly, almost as if musing to himself. "If you want to. I will need help, I'll admit. I seem to be in rather a difficult position, just now."  
  
Margot nodded once, satisfied, and wordlessly walked past the two men, through the door. She did not look back as her long, athletic stride quickly took her down the dark hallway and out of sight.  
  
"Just us, now, Dr. Doemling," Lecter said to his terrified prisoner. There was a small, serene, almost gentle smile on his pale face. His cruel, unyielding grip deepened and tightened at Doemling's shoulder.  
  
"Come. We'll have to hurry if we hope to see the sun come up. You, in particular, won't want to miss that. And I'll offer you a small bargain, how would that be? You're familiar with bargains, Dr. Doemling, are you not? Refrain from screaming now, while we're still in this house . . ."  
  
He paused and moved his face very close to Doemling's, still gripping and crushing the psychologist's ruined shoulder, hissing and hissing through his sharp white teeth.  
  
"Refrain from screaming now, Dr. Doemling, and I'll give you my solemn oath, that later, once we're away . . . out in the desert . . . I promise you that then, I'll let you scream. You can scream then, Dr. Doemling. You can scream . . . ALL . . . YOU . . .WANT."  
  
They left Margot Verger's house together, rushing east into the open desert in a stolen car, hurrying to catch the sunrise, the last Dr. Doemling would ever see.  
  
Later, at dawn, in a barren, washed out gully in the desert, Dr. Doemling discovered for himself that Hannibal Lecter was a man who always kept his promises. He screamed and screamed, just as Clarice Starling had done in a fancy hotel room reeking of spilled blood little over an hour before.  
  
And Dr. Lecter, just as he'd promised he would, let him scream all he wanted.  
  
********************************************************************* 


	10. Chapter Ten

Chapter Ten  
  
Monday, October 16, 5:00 AM, Four Seasons  
  
Clarice Starling was stumbling along a hotel corridor, surrounded on all sides by a protective phalanx of emergency medical technicians and uniformed police officers. Deputy SAC Frank Ortega walked at her side, gently grasping her arm, close enough to get his own face in any pictures, should they encounter press. Which Clarice fully expected they would.  
  
Her battered face was half hidden in the folds of a hospital blanket she clutched around her head and shoulders, refugee-style. Hotel guests loitered about the hall and popped their heads out of room doors to watch her pass, as uniforms tried to clear the way, herding the curious back into their rooms.  
  
Earlier, as she had been gently removed from her staged bed of pain, Clarice had felt like the centerpiece in some perverse and blasphemous deposition scene.  
  
But as time had passed, in odd dreamlike jerks and starts, she'd seen the way sympathy for the present victim had been quickly replaced with the crime scene investigator's trained concentration on the absent assailant. It had been as though Dr. Lecter had become the more vivid presence in the minds of the onlookers, although she was the one who was actually in the room.  
  
She had amended her somewhat florid conception of a deposition to a more homey analogy. In truth, she felt more like the Thanksgiving turkey, the central object of busy preparations for a holiday feast, rather than Christ down from the cross.  
  
Dr. Lecter enjoyed Christian symbolism and loved twisting it into outlandish and absurd new shapes. It was a mental tic of his, a time- passer, something he did the same way others might count sheep or imagine winning the lottery to occupy their minds during boring moments. He often mentally clothed her in Christ-like trappings, she knew, for his own intellectual amusement. But she did not find such games appropriate at all. She had been no selfless savior, she had made no significant sacrifices. Every one of her decisions for the past year of stolen happiness, and all that had led to it, had been motivated solely by her own desire and will. All her own choices, made honestly, and without constraint.  
  
She, ultimately, was the one who had put herself in this room, the passive, naked bird isolated at the center of feverish activity.  
  
She wondered if her absent lover would be able to comprehend this truth. She feared that he might well believe himself to be the primary author of this sad little drama. She would have to explain it to him, once they were reunited, explain it carefully, make him believe. In spite of all his frightening intellectual acuity and power of perception, he had his blind spots. There were still some things he could not see.  
  
She had remained studiously incoherent for the benefit of the officers, speaking only in disjointed, traumatized whispers and hysterical moans. The medics had given her some powerful pain-killing drug in an injection, after ascertaining the extent of her physical injuries. She'd flown on the stuff, whatever it had been, and everything had taken on an odd hyper-real glitter for her, like the hugely portentous, illogical events in a vivid dream. She did not wish to answer substantive questions while stoned on high grade pharmaceuticals, so she had kept to unconnected gibberish.  
  
While this was something all of the techs and paramedics and agents and cops and others that swarmed the suite could understand perfectly (or thought that they could), it also lessened their immediate interest in what she might say considerably. Lecter had successfully flown, and this was a bad thing, a negative value in the career equations of the agents in charge of the botched arrest. But they still had her, a witness of the most intimate kind, to question down the road , and this positive would balance out such equations. She was a kind of inanimate consolation prize to them, for later, when all the second guessing would begin.  
  
But she could tell them nothing of use now, she knew they had decided, not at the moment, anyway. Better to reconstruct, piece by small piece of evidence at the scene, the living image of the fled monster and his last actions before escaping.  
  
As though he was the grisly specter in the room that haunted them all, there and not there.  
  
Ah, Zen and the art of Lectermyth maintenance. She must remember to mention that to him, when she could. He'd laugh.  
  
This transference of focus had suited Clarice. She had not felt up to extensive Q and A just then. She was very tired, aside from everything else, and was quite content to remain a voiceless object as long as she could.  
  
She had made only one tactical decision as she'd been helped from the hotel bed and examined and medicated and so forth. She had decided not to allow herself to be taken out of the hotel on a stretcher.  
  
So she'd faked a burst of screaming panic at the sight of the gurney the paramedics had brought in for her, and had shrunk from the innocuous piece of equipment as though it was an instrument of torture. She was gratified to note telling glances darting from face to face among the law enforcement personnel at her reaction. Clearly they imagined that stretchers or gurneys must have somehow played some unknown, horrific role in her torment during her year of captivity. She could see imaginations busily spinning depraved scenarios to fit to the imagined circumstances.  
  
Good God, the inexhaustible gullibility of people! How easy it was to believe the worst, how quickly the mind could supply the stuff of nightmare in the absence of actual facts, how entertaining it all was, in the end. How strange that the truth would have been so much harder for these good, decent, normal people to credit.  
  
How right Dr. Lecter had been when he'd predicted the greedy way this dark fairy tale they'd concocted would be consumed by all.  
  
Here you are, folks, all the psychosexual horror you can guzzle. No need to trouble with the truth. The truth is actually pretty slippery, and we do need our finite borders, don't we? This is white, that is black . . .  
  
She'd felt a dismal upwelling of profound, icebound contempt for the petty wickedness of the entire human race, a terrible, wearisome burden that she had suddenly understood HE bore constantly, every moment of every day.  
  
God, it must be awful to live that way, all the time. She had felt vaguely sick.  
  
But her histrionics had earned her the chance to stumble out of the hotel on her feet, just as she wished.  
  
Outside these walls, in the parking garage where the ambulance for her would be waiting, the members of the press, the reporters and photographers, the video cameras and news vans, would be gathering like carrion birds at the gibbet. Dr. Lecter would have seen to it that the floodgates to the media were well opened before he'd gone. The police would never have been able to keep the tide back, to keep them all out of the garage. They'd be covering every exit, just as the law enforcement officers had.  
  
The media would tear into this story like a combine tears into the earth, bringing layer after buried layer of raw dirt to view. They would want sound bites, interviews, detailed information. But first and foremost, before anything else, they would want pictures.  
  
Clarice knew she would make a better subject for film on her feet. It was difficult to get a really good look at someone bundled in a gurney and surrounded by standing figures. She hoped to make the morning news, and wanted every last mark or bruise on her face to show to full advantage. None must be lost on the mass audience that would soon be watching. It had cost them both far too much to put them there in the first place.  
  
So she stumbled along with her escort of paramedics and officers, and clutched her blanket tightly as they rode to a connecting level to the garage in an elevator.  
  
She had to struggle to keep her aching face from assuming a bitter smile as the elevator doors whooshed open at the garage level and she saw what was beyond.  
  
The doors opened on a nightmarish maelstrom of flashbulbs and camera lenses and shouted questions, thrusting microphones like hungry beaks and what seemed like hundreds of bright pairs of staring eyes, avid and curious, beady as bird's eyes. The flock of media people surged forward at the sight of her, bundled in her blanket, and the uniforms around her closed ranks as best they could, forming a protective barrier. Ortega clutched her arm almost painfully as, for a moment, he shrank back toward the rear of the elevator car, his own eagerness to be photographed at her side momentarily forgotten.  
  
Clarice wanted to shrink back too. Between the drugs she'd been given and her deepening fatigue and the awful emotional extremes she had endured in the last few hours, all her innate reserves of courage and strength had been much depleted. Everything was beginning to seem like a terrible dream. For a moment, dazed by the drugs in her blood, blinded by the lights, overwhelmed by the battering, incomprehensible noise of too many voices raised at once, she honestly believed she was being attacked by a flock of nightmare crows with human faces.  
  
A "murder" of crows, they called it. That was how one referred to a large gathering of the scavenging birds.  
  
She felt a great need to scream boiling up out of her tensed stomach and filling her throat and mouth like some foul liquid. This time, in earnest. But she did not dare to do it.  
  
She was suddenly afraid that if she once started screaming now, she might never stop. She was slipping. Everything was slipping out of her grasp.  
  
In this strange dawn hour, Clarice, trapped with a mob in a concrete bunker, could not see it, but the sun was rising. A certain knowledge came to her, the kind of arcane knowledge that resides in the unguessable spaces between the heart and the head.  
  
As she was struggling to contain her fear and rage and disgust, seeking for some last shred of strength in her nearly sapped spirit, at the same moment, the one dark soul in the world she was most attuned to was seeking his own caustic solace in the deadly intimacy of murder.  
  
Cold comfort that ruined even as it relieved, poisoned as it nourished, deformed as it strengthened. But comfort nonetheless. Through whatever unknown conduit that opens between people who love beyond reason, Clarice somehow gathered the black sustenance of that corrosive comfort to herself. She felt renewed strength hardening her will and chilling her heart, dire but welcome.  
  
Black magic, perhaps, borne on the pale rays of the rising sun above them both. A sending. Did he pause in the pursuit of his artful atrocities and think, for a moment, of her?  
  
Could he hear her? Did he see her? Had he sensed her need?  
  
No matter. She found she was able to walk forward into the curiously avian crowd of cawing media people once more, if only for a few more steps. She let her blanket slip away to her shoulders and revealed her marked face to her strange new admirers. She stood erect and turned slightly as she moved toward the ambulance to give them her best angles.  
  
She looked weirdly beautiful, as an apparition might. The photo opps were stunning.  
  
Then her own will, and with it whatever she'd borrowed from a distance, broke.  
  
"Crows," she murmured faintly, for no rational reason she knew. "Stone the crows."  
  
She collapsed forward into the arms of the medics around her in an exhausted faint.  
  
A highly dramatic moment, something to run on the morning news again and again. The whirring, chirping video cams devoured it all.  
  
October 16, 7:30 AM, Summerlin  
  
Dr. Lecter was dozing. The alarms and activities of the previous day, night and morning just passed had drained even his odd constitution at last, and he had become exhausted.  
  
He was curled in a compact ball, wedged out of sight in a corner of the covered deck that shaded half of Margot Verger's pool, a deck chair screening him from view on the right, a pair of potted succulents providing cover on the left. His head and back rested against the wall of the deck, and he was wrapped in early morning shadows, like a viper in a nest.  
  
He was covered in the gritty, grey-brown dust of the Las Vegas desert, and blood marked his hands, folded neatly against his breast, and stained the cuffs of his shirt. His closed eyelids twitched occasionally, betokening REM sleep.  
  
He had ditched his stolen vehicle in the same gully that was now the final resting place of one Dr. Everett Doemling, former professor of psychology, now carrion. It would not do, he had reasoned, to bring a stolen, easily traceable car to Margot Verger's doorstep. He had decided to avail himself of the help she had courteously offered, but he did not wish to create problems for his former patient. Her involvement in his currently disarrayed affairs must be kept strictly dark.  
  
Indeed, she must be seen to behave as though she were utterly appalled to learn that Hannibal Lecter, insane murderer of her only brother, was at large in Las Vegas. She must pretend to be frightened and angry with the police for letting him slip out of their grasp, and it would be best if she angrily demanded police protection too. He'd made a mental note to remember to mention the matter to her when he saw her.  
  
It would be amusing as well, he had thought, to hide in plain sight at her home for a time, while the police guarded against his advent just outside. One must take one's amusements wherever they could be found. Especially in trying times like these, when small diversions were all too scarce.  
  
Lacking a better vehicle, he'd walked out of the desert, a two hour trek through dusty roads and suburban neighborhoods, somnolent and empty so early on a Monday morning. He had not been much concerned with being seen. The authorities were unlikely to be scouring the suburbs for a fugitive on foot, not yet.  
  
And he had simply been unconcerned. He had entered that disconnected, coldly drifting state of consciousness that was his way with all pains and threats hours before his final appointment with Doemling. From the moment he had walked out of his room at the hotel and left Clarice behind, he had been locked fast in this strange separate place within himself, as though he had taken a step to the left, while all the rest of existence had taken a step to the right. A shifted reality he had often found it difficult to find his way back from. He had wanted the sensory anchor of a long walk to help him find the way, and so he had taken one.  
  
But it had been tiring. The early desert sun was not so terrible in October as it would likely be in July, but it had, nonetheless, begun to pry at his tired eyes and scrape at his fair skin in his second hour on the road. There had been dust, and he was thirsty. He had supped fully on those forms of sustenance he had learned to covet in a time long gone by, but his thirst for the living warmth of freshly spilled blood and his hunger for the rich milk of terror could never be entirely fulfilled. These appetites were such that they increased exponentially even as they were slaked. There was never enough. So, on the road, in the dust and the prying sun, he had begun to crave the simplicity of water.  
  
Once at Margot's well-filled and well lived-in hacienda, he had drunk from a garden hose like a child unwilling to come in from play long enough for a proper drink, and had washed his burnt, dusty face. There had been the pool, and he had wanted to sit quietly beside that water for a space, to assuage his thirst in a different way. He had wanted to rest.  
  
He had not wished to talk, or to see other mortal creatures at this time. He had not wished to enter the house. He had settled himself in an unobtrusive corner of the covered deck beside the pool, grateful for the cool shade and the quiet and the pleasingly complex smell of chlorinated water.  
  
The scent had brought Clarice, who liked to swim, to his mind, and he thought of a time when they'd visited the ruins of Tikal, on a whim of his. This past spring, it had been. They had stayed at a little resort at nearby Belize City, and he remembered how she would come into their room at evening, fresh from the pool just outside, dripping pool water on the carpet at her feet. For some reason, the random combination of the scents of chlorine and fresh evening air and her own innate fragrance had struck him as sensual beyond measure, and he'd asked her not to towel the water from her skin. And she had done just as he'd asked, to please him.  
  
Clarice often indulged his caprices with unstrained graciousness, and he'd devoted a whole new storehouse of memory to her many, many unwarranted kindnesses to him over the past year. Her inexplicable generosity was puzzling, mesmerizing, and perhaps a bit frightening.  
  
It would be so easy to become dependent on such unlooked for largesse, gifts freely given, neither earned nor compelled. She had uncovered desires in him he had not known he harbored, indeed, had not known that he could harbor. There was a considerable portion of his consciousness now that was always completely open to her, an unguarded door, and that was a peril.  
  
In light of recent events, there might well be no more precious memories to store away. He knew he might lose her now, but could no longer be certain what would happen to him if he did.  
  
Even in the midst of his systematic destruction of Dr. Doemling, the image of Clarice's beautiful face had come to him, the marked, ravaged face he himself was responsible for.  
  
He'd known, somehow, in some arcane way, that she was failing, that the strength she needed to complete her tasks was flagging.  
  
Without knowing or caring how he did it, he'd sent her something, some intangible. There was a channel between them, always open now, or so it seemed. He'd released Doemling's soul to wherever there was for her, ended the man's torment and fear quickly, before he was quite through savoring it. A sacrificial release of energy.  
  
Rough magic. He'd heard the words "stone the crows" quite clearly, not with his ears, but with his heart.  
  
There had been no more. The channel had dimmed and emptied. Was she all right? Safe? He didn't know. He'd set to the familiar business of disposing of the remains, dumping the car, alone and disconnected once again, and suddenly unutterably weary.  
  
That weariness had been his shadow-companion on the dusty road back to Margot's house, and had nestled in beside him as he'd settled in the shade by Margot's pool, like an unwanted Siamese twin. It had overcome him as he'd sat resting, and now he dozed.  
  
And dreamed.  
  
. . . a tree stump chopping block on a snowy hill, and the bitter cold winter wind all around. The countryside ravaged; the wolves of war loose in the fields this winter, the harshest in years. He was floundering through the deep drifts of snow, ascending the hill, unwilling. He knew this frozen black-and-white landscape so well, a hated place he could never completely leave. He was freezing. He was starving. He was terribly angry. He was afraid . . .  
  
. . . there was something to learn at the top of the snow-bound hill, some ruining sight he did not wish to see. But there was no option, really. He lacked the ability NOT to see. His vision, both literal and figurative, was perpetually clear. He could not remember a time, ever, when he had been able to look away. From anything . . .  
  
. . . some figure was crumpled at the base of the block, half draped over the rough bark, clothed in a glossy black moving shroud. Flashes of orange in the black, sharp points of vivid color. Beaks. A shroud of crows, then, covering the vaguely human shape, black feathers and orange beaks, Halloween colors . . .  
  
"Dr. Lecter?"  
  
. . . closer still, close enough to hear the rustle of feathers as the birds took flight, reluctantly abandoning their feast. Angry caws as he, an uninvited guest, disturbed their revels. Too close. There was something wrong with the figure, it was bent in a physical configuration no live human could assume. No, not this. Please. Mischa? . . .  
  
"Dr. Lecter, it's me. Can you hear me?"  
  
. . . a woman's body, not a child's, not a baby's. The torso here, the head there, blood everywhere. Red gold hair and black feathers in the snow. It was so cold . . .  
  
"Wake up, now. Can you hear me? Wake up."  
  
. . . Clarice's face. Livid bruises on her cheeks and a bite on her mouth, right eye swollen shut, the other pecked out. Mouth open in a last scream, head irreparably divorced from body, the damage done and no remedy possible. Take this back, God, I know you can hear me. Undo it. Undo it now . . .  
  
"Listen to me . . . you're dreaming."  
  
. . . bitter, unending cold. Hunger and distant pain, a low-grade ache in his left hand. A stiffness, from muscles clenched too long and too tightly, around some tightly grasped object. No. Rigid and roughly cylindrical, wood grain against his palm. No. An axe handle. A beheaded, well-loved body, crumpled at the foot of the block, a severed, crow despoiled head, an axe in his hand . . .  
  
He jerked awake and his eyes flew open and he saw Margot Verger kneeling beside him. He saw her flinch back before whatever she saw in his face.  
  
"Crows," he screamed, and then, instantly fully awake and aware of his surroundings, clapped his hands over his mouth to still any further screaming. It wouldn't do to rouse the household.  
  
"Dr. Lecter, it's me," Margot said, eyes wide and frightened.  
  
"I know who you are, Margot. Good morning. I'm very sorry if I've disturbed you."  
  
"Are you all right?"  
  
"Hmm. I'm not quite sure how to answer that. On the whole, I suppose I am."  
  
"How long have you been sleeping out here?"  
  
"I don't know."  
  
They stared at each other, strange fellows, bound by many common experiences, and a history of dark mutual favors. It was good to see Margot on this awful morning, Dr. Lecter reflected. He liked and admired her very much.  
  
"Would you like to come in the house now?" she asked, after some hesitation. She spoke gently, cautiously.  
  
"You're afraid, Margot. I can see that you are. Are you quite sure you still want to extend such an invitation? You don't have to, you know. You really don't owe me anything."  
  
"It's not a matter of debts," she said, and smiled for the first time. "Nothing that simple. We're old pals, right? Come on in the house. Or are you just gonna stay out here in the yard, lurking under the porch like some mean junkyard dog?"  
  
He smiled too. It was an amusing image.  
  
He rose from his spot and stood, gazing back at the large house, observing the terraced patio and grounds.  
  
"You don't seem to have a porch, Margot, dear. I don't see one, anyway. It appears I'll HAVE to come inside."  
  
She laughed. "Good. Let's go. After you."  
  
He walked ahead of her, a pace or two. "You don't want me at your back, Margot?"  
  
"Very funny. Naw, I trust you. See that? Some psychiatrist you are! You treated me, and here I am, still crazy as hell. I must be . . . "  
  
"Perhaps you should sue me. Malpractice."  
  
"I'll think about it. You look terrible, you know."  
  
"How kind! I appreciate your plain spoken ways, Margot, really, I do. Well, it has been a long morning, I admit."  
  
"I've got an attic room for you, out of the way. The house is full of Judy's relatives. I swear, these Ingrams are like rabbits. Thank God they all sleep late. There's a shower and a decent bed. You'll need some rest."  
  
"I'll want to see a television."  
  
"Starling?" she asked, and then flushed, as though embarrassed by having voiced too personal a question.  
  
"Margot -"  
  
"No, don't answer, I'm sorry. I'll see that you get one. And then later, after you've had a chance to regroup, we'll talk, okay?"  
  
They'd come to a service entrance to the house, off the laundry room. They slipped inside. The house was quiet. No one saw them pass.  
  
Margot was as good as her word. By eight-thirty that morning, Dr. Lecter was safely tucked away by himself in a comfortable attic room, freshly showered and wrapped in one of Margot's terry bathrobes, a loose fit.  
  
He was sitting in an old easy chair, hands resting on the threadbare arms, watching Clarice Starling on a portable black and white television.  
  
He saw her shrink back from the cameras and the incomprehensible cawing of the crowds of reporters, framed by the doors of an elevator. She looked dazed. Drugs, he imagined. They would have given her something for pain, at the very least. Then he saw her posture stiffen, saw her recover her courage, a visible renewal of her energy. A renewal that he too had lived with her, from a distance, he was certain of it.  
  
He saw how she was able to move forward to meet the crowd. He saw her present her battered face to the cameras, and he smiled at the deliberate stagecraft in the act, even as he shuddered at the ugliness of the marks he'd put there for her to show.  
  
He saw her sway dizzily, and saw her wounded mouth forming words, her voice lost to hearing in the din of other, stronger voices. But he knew what she was saying. His own lips formed the words silently as he watched.  
  
"Crows. Stone the crows."  
  
Ah, Clarice. What have I done to you? And what have you done to me?  
  
He saw her pitch forward in an exhausted swoon and his hands gripped the arms of his chair hard enough to break through the heavy fabric under his fingers.  
  
" . . . Ms. Starling was taken to Sunrise Hospital and Medical Center where she is currently listed in satisfactory condition . . . "  
  
He rose and switched the television off. He had no desire to see the newsclip or to hear the reports again, not right now. He did not wish to hear his own name repeated in this context, as it had been and would be, again and again.  
  
He was very tired. There was a comfortable, narrow bed in this borrowed refuge. He would rest now.  
  
Sunrise Hospital and Medical Center. Yes.  
  
Later . . .  
  
************************************************************* 


	11. Chapter Eleven

Chapter Eleven  
  
Monday, October 16, 1:30 PM, Summerlin  
  
A year old video tape of Rinaldo Pazzi, gutted, swinging from an electrical cord against the floodlit walls of the Palazzo Vecchio, flickered on the large color television set in Margot and Judy's den. Several Ingrams, two cousins, a brother, and an elderly aunt whose name Margot could never remember, were watching raptly, like children at the story hour. They had all been watching soaps when the news bulletins had started breaking in to the regular programming and now watched this more absorbing show with avid interest.  
  
Judy and Margot stood together in the doorway to the room, neither in nor out, and watched the television screen silently. Judy had Michael slung on her hip, and he cooed occasionally, almost as though entertained by the videotaped exploits of his namesake.  
  
The image onscreen changed to a mug shot of Dr. Lecter, taken at the time of his arrest. Neither Judy nor Margot thought the photo looked much like him.  
  
Lecter's former face disappeared and was replaced by a close video shot of Clarice Starling's face, taken only this morning. This shot was then replaced by a more distant shot, her full figure stepping off the hotel elevator, her hospital blanket like a veil slipping away from her face, her highly dramatic fainting spell.  
  
"That poor girl," commented the Ingram auntie. "I can't even begin to imagine what all that . . . that ANIMAL must have done to her." She shuddered extravagantly and rolled her eyes as she shook her head, thus indicating that perhaps she actually could begin to imagine it, after all. And was not completely averse to doing so.  
  
Margot and Judy exchanged a look and left their threshold television vantage point. Judy followed Margot, striding purposefully, down the hall and into the kitchen, currently empty. Once there, Margot's purposeful manner evaporated, and she looked around the empty, sunny room without really seeing it, turning in several distracted circles. Finally, she turned to Judy and raised her hands in a vague "what-now?" gesture.  
  
"Let's have some tea," Judy said. "I'll put on a pot. Sit down, Margot."  
  
Margot sat heavily at the big mission style refectory table they used in the kitchen. Judy handed her the baby.  
  
"That 'animal' they're talking about is snoozing right upstairs, Judy," she said, keeping her voice low. "Probably having some hellish bad dreams, too. Sure hope he doesn't walk in his sleep! I'm not sure tea is gonna help."  
  
Judy, rather incredibly, laughed.  
  
"Well, maybe not. But it couldn't hurt," she pointed out.  
  
Margot had to smile. Judy finished filling the kettle with water and put it on to boil. Then she pulled a chair out and sat down, knee to knee, with Margot.  
  
"Let's talk, baby," she said. 'Tell me what's on your mind."  
  
Margot sighed and ran one hand through her hair, supporting Michael with the other hand.  
  
"I'm not sure what's on my mind. My so-called mind. You saw those pictures."  
  
"That whole Starling thing is bullshit. He was just getting her out of there without getting her arrested, the only way he could. It was smart. And she was in on it, too, must have been. Did you see her playing to those cameras? Like a model on the catwalk."  
  
"Before she passed right the fuck out! Those marks on her face aren't bullshit, Judy. That Italian cop isn't bullshit. What probably happened to that motherfucker Doemling isn't bullshit."  
  
"The things we saw at the party last night weren't bullshit either, Margot. He loves that woman, and he'd obviously do anything to keep her safe, no matter how it looks on the surface. That part is true, too. And you know it as well as I do. So, what do you want to do? Ask him to leave?"  
  
Margot stroked the baby's head, enjoying the silky feel of his baby hair. She raised her eyes to Judy.  
  
"I just . . . I just wonder if I haven't made a mistake. It was the right thing to do, taking him in, sure. They would never have had this trouble if they hadn't come to visit us, you know? But . . . was it really the right thing to do, for you, for Mikey? You saw what he did to that cop. THAT'S who I gave that attic room to! The whole fucking world is looking for him, right now. I'm just wondering if I haven't put you guys in terrible danger, all because of my sense of obligation, all because of MY past. I never asked you how YOU felt about it, Judy. I just went ahead and did it."  
  
She lowered her gaze from Judy's clear brown eyes, and stared at the top of Mikey's head instead.  
  
Judy put her hand on Margot's knee.  
  
"Margot, look at me."  
  
Margot looked up, and met Judy's strangely stern gaze.  
  
"Did HE really kill Mason for you, Margot? Was he REALLY the one?"  
  
Margot just stared at Judy, caught in her gaze, unable to answer. They had never before discussed this issue, not directly.  
  
"Have I ever asked you about what really happened, that night?" Judy went on. "You don't want to talk about it, fine, I don't ask. But do you really think I don't know, or guess?"  
  
The kettle whistled as it boiled and Margot was spared the effort of trying to form an answer to Judy's question. Judy rose to take the kettle off the heat and spoke from the stove as she prepared the tea.  
  
"What I'm trying to tell you, Margot, is that it doesn't matter. I love you. I don't care what you did. I don't care what your cracked friend upstairs did. Sometimes . . . maybe once in a lifetime, we get lucky enough to find someone to love, really love. And it really doesn't matter if the one we love is a good or a bad person. Or who their friends are."  
  
She stopped to bring two cups of the fragrant tea over to the table, and sat down as she placed one before Margot and took a sip from her own cup.  
  
"We just love, and try to be as happy as we can, as long as we can," she went on. "It's not just YOUR past, Margot. It's OUR past, yours and mine and Mikey's. We're together, we're a family. So . . . here's what's going on - a good friend of yours is in trouble. You're helping him out. And I'm GLAD to go along, do whatever I can to help too, for your sake, if for no other reason. And that's all there is to it, really, that's it. Simple, see? Now stop worrying yourself sick and drink your tea."  
  
Margot snorted laughter. "Yes, Mother," she said, and drank some of the tea. "Good thing you don't care what he did, 'cause he's killed sixteen people, by the FBI's count. But it's really probably double that number. And I killed - "  
  
"Stop," Judy interrupted. "I told you, I don't care. But you do, I think. So we'll skip it. Listen, all this could be a good thing. We could start a program or something. MA"  
  
Now Margot really laughed, hard enough to choke on her tea.  
  
"Murderer's Anonymous? Cool! Let's invite O.J.!"  
  
"Oh, no, Margot, we have to draw the line somewhere. Even MA has to have SOME standards."  
  
They both giggled and Michael goggled at them, amazed and intrigued by the trilling sound of their laughter.  
  
"How was he, when you saw him this morning?" Judy asked, her giggles subsiding. "Bad shape?"  
  
Margot shook her head.  
  
"If death could have a face . . . " she said, an unhappy frown creasing her own brow. "Sleeping out by the pool. Having a nightmare. Holy God, the look in his eyes when he woke up . . . like nothing I've ever seen."  
  
"Maybe he needs some tea. It's been what . . . five or six hours? Should I bring him something, do you think? And don't frown like that, Margot, or your face will stick that way."  
  
"He's not a milk and cookies kind of guy, Mother Judy."  
  
"Oh, so, I should bring some raw hamburger instead? Maybe some wolf chow, or some cat treats? Must I start with the cannibal jokes?"  
  
"Sshhh," Margot hissed, as Judy's Uncle Bob came wandering into the kitchen.  
  
"Hi, girls," Uncle Bob said, and moved to the fridge to scout the contents. "Just about lunch time, let's see what's left over. . . " He continued to rummage in the refrigerator.  
  
"Some party, huh? I think I had one too many margaritas. Hey, have either of you seen my grey suit? I meant to take it to the cleaners, left it in the laundry room after the party last night. Now I can't find it. Trouble is, I think I might have left my wallet in it."  
  
Judy and Margot glanced at each other as Uncle Bob set out ingredients for what looked to be an extremely complicated sandwich. Both of them were noticing that Uncle Bob was a dark, slim man in his mid-fifties, and was maybe only an inch or two taller than Dr. Lecter.  
  
"Uh . . . I'll look around for it, okay, Uncle Bob?" Judy said. "I'll see if I can find it."  
  
"Thanks, hon. Must be around somewhere. Can I fix either of you girls a sandwich? Bob Ingram specials?"  
  
Neither of them wanted a Bob Ingram special. Judy poured a cup of tea and took it out of the kitchen with a fast, telling nod to Margot. Margot watched as Uncle Bob completed the complex construction of his sandwich, poured himself a glass of milk, and finally left the kitchen. She played a quick game of peek-a-boo with Mikey while she waited for Judy to return.  
  
It didn't take long. Judy slipped back into the kitchen only five minutes later.  
  
She sat down at the table again and put the cup of tea she'd taken up with her down on the tabletop.  
  
"Gone," she said, with no need for further explanation.  
  
"God damn it!" Margot cried, and Mikey laughed at her sudden volume while Judy shushed her. "Of course he'd just slip off! I should have guessed. With Bob's clothes and ID too, no doubt. Where the hell would he go?"  
  
"Here's a note," Judy said. "Found it pinned to the bedspread."  
  
Margot looked over the note, penned on an old grocery receipt he'd probably found in the trash.  
  
"Dear Margot," the note read:  
  
"I have some errands to run, and I thought it best to be off before the house was fully roused. I haven't yet thanked you properly for all your kindness, but, should my business today go as planned, I'll be back later tonight, and will convey my gratitude personally. If things should go awry, and we do not have a chance to speak again, please know that I'm very grateful for all you've done. The attic room was very comfortable. I find I am quite refreshed.  
  
HL  
  
PS. I'm afraid I had to borrow Uncle Bob's suit and identification. I'd met him at the party last night, and noticed, among other things, that he is not wholly unlike me in appearance and size. My apologies. I'll be certain to return the wallet at the earliest opportunity, and will, of course, have the suit cleaned and pressed. I hope he will not be too greatly inconvenienced."  
  
"What an idiot I am!" Margot exclaimed when she was finished reading. A half amused, half distressed smile stretched her mouth. "All that worrying about the tiger in the attic, and the whole time, he wasn't even there. What do you think he meant by 'errands', Judy?"  
  
Judy shook her head, no trace of amusement on her kind, pleasant face.  
  
"I've got a pretty good guess, I think," she said. "But you won't like it."  
  
"Where?"  
  
"The hospital, of course. Where they took Starling. He'd want to check on her himself, don't you think? Not trust to news reports?"  
  
"Oh, shit," Margot moaned, dismayed at how good Judy's guess actually was. "The place will be crawling with security. They'll have a twenty-four hour guard on her, you know they will! He could never get to her. It'd be crazy to try."  
  
"Crazy? You're saying it would be crazy?" Judy repeated, and said no more.  
  
Margot took Judy's point immediately. She felt the gnawing, dreary bite of worry beginning to dig in at once.  
  
"Oh, NO," she groaned. "Oh, goddamn. That fucking nut! Of course you're right, that's exactly what he'll do. I should have checked on him. I could have gone myself, if he'd just told me."  
  
"I don't get the impression that would have suited him, Margot. I think he probably HAD to see her for himself. What should we do now?" Judy asked.  
  
"Nothing we can do. Just keeping quiet is the best thing, I guess. We'll know if things went wrong soon enough."  
  
"What? How?"  
  
"We'll see it on TV," Margot said grimly. "'Hannibal the Cannibal, killed in police shoot out at local hospital'. You know how the cops are in this town. Jesus God, I hope it won't be like that. I really do."  
  
"Me too," Judy said, unhappily. "I really do, too. Well . . . but maybe he'll be okay. Your friend is smart, even if he is crazy. "  
  
"One of these days, he's gonna outsmart himself, " Margo said, shaking her head.  
  
Judy rose from the table, slowly, as though she felt tired. "I guess it's gonna be a long day. I'll put on some more tea."  
  
Judy and Margot and baby Mikey sat in the sunny, empty kitchen, and began the long vigil ahead with a second pot of tea.  
  
October 16, 2:15 PM, a rest stop on I-10 North, three miles from Nellis Air Force Base  
  
"I'm gonna go take a piss, Junius. Fish me a Bud out of that cooler while you got yore hands in it, want to? And let's put that puppy up front in the pickup with us when we get goin' again."  
  
"Durned ice is pretty durn near all melted. I TOLD ya we should've got more at that fillin' station back there."  
  
"Hell no, not at any five friggin' dollars a bag I wasn't! Don't bother me none if the beer's some warm."  
  
"Well, I like it cold, goldurn it! And now I gotta drink it warm, 'cause you was too almighty tight to part with a extra couple of bucks! I swear, Billy Lee, you are the cheapest SOB in all creation, bar none!"  
  
"I ain't cheap, by God. Just frugal."  
  
Junius, who was a practicing Baptist, frowned slightly as Billy Lee took the Lord's name in vain.  
  
"Well where's my beer?" Billy Lee continued. "I'm standin' here waitin', and the beer ain't gettin' any colder. 'Sides, I toldja, I gotta use the commode."  
  
"Caint you once take a leak without a dang beer to go with ya? I'm surprised ya don't never get yore pecker mixed up with yore Budweiser! Drain one and try to chug t'other."  
  
Junius Odom and Billy Lee Peacock, hunting buddies from Texas, both guffawed goatishly at the fantastic idea of a man mistaking his own trouser snake for a can of beer. And vice versa.  
  
It was the first decent laugh they'd had today. The two good ol' boys from Amarillo had been on their annual autumn hunting odyssey for two weeks, and had killed legions of wild animals and "varmints" in that time. They'd traveled through Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico and Nevada on their journey, and were now headed home, to Texas. Billy Lee had got himself a grand eight- point buck back in New Mexico, and would have a nice trophy head to mount in his den once the Raton taxidermist shipped it to him in Amarillo. Junius had failed to bag any deer, but had annihilated thirteen rattlesnakes, two dozen rabbits, one prairie dog (by accident), and two coyotes out in Death Valley, during their forays there.  
  
All that killing, as well as two weeks of enforced togetherness within the close confines of Billy Lee's trailer, had made them both tired and irritable, and as always happened at the end of their trip each year, they were glad to be going home.  
  
They would traditionally end the testosterone-soaked yearly hunting extravaganza with a weekend of boozing and gambling and whoring in Las Vegas, and had become mightily sick of one another's company during the last few days of excess. They always took the trailer on their annual trip, because it saved them the cost of hotel bills, and they always stayed at Circus Circus in Las Vegas, because it had a trailer/RV park.  
  
An unusual feature for a Las Vegas resort. One that, several hours earlier, had attracted the interest of Hannibal Lecter, too.  
  
After a couple of hours of sleep at Margot Verger's house, as well as more hideous dreams, Dr. Lecter had awakened both refreshed and troubled. Clarice's fainting spell that he had seen on television had worried him. He thought it had probably been due to drugs, fatigue and stress, but one could never be sure. He'd determined to go to the hospital and satisfy himself as to her condition immediately upon waking.  
  
That this was not the wisest course of action he could choose to take had not occurred to him at all. The course of his life to date had been such that risk was a constant factor in all he did, so constant, in fact, that he had become virtually oblivious to it. It was like a steady background noise, or a continual mildly objectionable odor, something so incessant that he no longer fully registered it. He was aware that a trip to the hospital would present difficulties, and that he would have to take various steps to clear the way for himself, but the idea of just not going had never once touched his thought, not even remotely.  
  
Further, his dreams and all his tormented reflections of the long, dreadful morning just passed had been steadily leading him toward certain bleak conclusions. More than anything else, he just wanted to see her. He had become more and more afraid that it might well be the last time. Hannibal Lecter was a man who wanted what he wanted. Sober considerations of costs and consequences never had cut much ice with him.  
  
He had guessed that there would be a guard on Clarice. The authorities would not really expect him to try to harm her, or even to reclaim her as his prisoner, now that she had been "rescued". Nevertheless, he was as famous for being a "psycho" as for anything, and they would have taken appropriate precautions on that basis alone. He expected that he would be able to get through the security, armed with both his altered face that had never been photographed, and with Uncle Bob's ID. But he could get through much more easily if he could cause the guard to be relaxed a bit.  
  
If the police and the FBI believed that he had fled Las Vegas, if he could convince them of that, then the security around Clarice would, indeed, be relaxed. They would think him long gone, and their vigilance would suffer accordingly.  
  
So, he had settled on a plan to stage a spurious border crossing for the benefit of those holding Clarice. He'd flitted about Margot Verger's home during the mid-morning hours, avoiding her house guests neatly and picking up whatever things he needed. He'd taken Bob's clothes and wallet, and had borrowed one of Mikey's toys from the nursery to use a bit later, at the hospital. He'd found an amusing canvas fishing hat in somebody's bedroom, one of those silly things that fairly screamed "retired". He'd found a pair of horn rimmed spectacles with smoked lenses in the den, forgotten next to a newspaper.  
  
He'd checked the local yellow pages, and noted the RV Park at Circus Circus.  
  
He was armed with his Harpy and Clarice's cut down pistol. All in all, he was as fully equipped as he needed to be.  
  
At ten-thirty AM, he had called for a taxi, and had given the address of a home two blocks away that he had noticed during his walk to Margot's earlier. The house had looked deserted, the owners probably away on vacation, and there had been a deep, shadowy porch at the front door, easy to hide in. He'd quietly left Margot's and walked to this house, and waited for his taxi in the shadows at the front door, just as though he lived there. When the taxi had come, he'd told the driver to take him to Circus Circus and had taken advantage of the long trip into the city from Summerlin to relax and go over his plans once more.  
  
Once he reached the trailer park, he would start to search for a very specific type of vehicle, and a very specific set of circumstances. He would be looking for a car or truck towing a trailer, one with out-of-state plates. He would be looking for such a rig with no more than two occupants, and said occupants must be leaving Las Vegas today, within the next two hours.  
  
And that is how an hour and a half of unobtrusive loitering and observation at the Circus Circus RV Park had led him, in the end, to the trailer of Billy Lee Peacock and Junius Odom, unlucky hunters from Amarillo, Texas.  
  
Now, as Billy Lee and Junius argued about the price of ice and how a man's pud could somehow resemble his Bud, Hannibal Lecter, hidden in the tiny shower in the trailer's mini-bathroom, listened to their talk and smiled coldly. His plans, necessarily, would not prove beneficial for Junius and Billy Lee, and this being the case, the fact that they were such unmitigated assholes was mildly pleasing to him.  
  
There were always compensations.  
  
Junius tossed Billy Lee the beer he'd requested, purposely over-throwing a bit, took one for himself, and shut the cooler lid with an annoyed thud.  
  
Billy Lee popped the top of his Bud, and scowled as the beer, crazed by the toss, foamed up out of the can and over his hand and sleeve.  
  
"Shitfire, Junius, why'd ya have ta throw the dang thing? Now I got beer on me!"  
  
"Well, hell, wouldn't be the first time, would it? Hep me pick up this cooler, Billy Lee. We can put it up front in the pickup."  
  
"No, I ain't. I'm going to the shithouse, I toldja."  
  
"Well, there it is, right there, durn it," Junius said irritably, pointing at the door of the bathroom. "If yore all done TELLIN' me about how ya gotta go, I mean, and yore fixin' to just GO sometime today!"  
  
Dr. Lecter tensed inside the shower, preparing for the potential advent of his quarry.  
  
But Billy Lee had other ideas.  
  
"Hell no, I ain't going in there! It stinks to high heaven and all, since we ain't never dumped the waste tank back at the RV park."  
  
He brusquely brushed past Junius to the trailer door as Dr. Lecter nodded silent agreement from his hiding place. The small bathroom did, indeed, stink. Billy Lee and Junius apparently lacked even the most rudimentary housekeeping skills. No doubt a fine pair of big ol' swinging dicks like these two believed such chores to be lowly work, fit for women only.  
  
"I'm going to them restrooms out there at the comfort station!" Billy Lee declared as he slammed open the trailer door and stomped down the steps outside.  
  
Junius had noticed, just as he did each year, that his buddy Billy Lee had the odd habit of invariably alerting his companions to every proposed detail of his bathroom calls. He had also just remembered, as he did each year, that this peculiar penchant of Billy Lee's bugged the living piss out of him.  
  
"Well, GO then, caint you?" he shouted out the door, completely out of patience. "I guess you done told me about it a hunnerd durn times already!"  
  
"Well, FINE!" Billy Lee growled, somewhat senselessly, from outside, and stalked off toward the men's room.  
  
Leaving Junius alone in the trailer with Dr. Lecter.  
  
Junius was bent over the cooler, trying to get a solid grasp on its rounded plastic corners before lifting it, when he heard the sound of the bathroom door opening, and then shutting again, quickly and firmly.  
  
He swung his head around toward the noise, thinking, for a startled, confused moment, that Billy Lee must have somehow gotten back inside and used the trailer commode after all. He popped up from his crouch at the beer cooler like a jackrabbit on springs as he saw a total stranger standing just outside the bathroom door.  
  
"Good afternoon, Junius," Dr. Lecter said. "Your friend Billy Lee is a pig. I don't blame you if you're tired of him."  
  
"Wha . . . who . . . ?" Junius started to say, but Dr. Lecter was on him, Harpy in hand, before he could complete the half-formed question.  
  
A roughly Z shaped flash of the knife in the relative dimness of the trailer interior traced fleeting fire across Junius' throat, abdomen, and upper thighs. The carotid arteries on both sides of his neck opened and spewed, his intestines, freed, suddenly glurped liquidly out of his sliced belly, and the femoral artery in his right thigh was severed, along with a very thin slice off the head of his penis, which had been in the way and deflected the slashing blade from his femoral on the left.  
  
Junius Odom collapsed instantly, like a marionette with cut strings. He was beyond any pain before he hit the floor, splashing a backwash of blood in every direction. He was dead, completely bled out, before three minutes had passed.  
  
Dr. Lecter stepped out of the way before the red tide gushing from Junius body could reach his shoes.  
  
He went swiftly to a closet he'd examined when he'd first broken into the trailer and waited inside for his unwary hosts to drive him out of Las Vegas. He'd found something very special in there.  
  
That Junius and Billy Lee must have been on some sort of hunting junket had been perfectly clear to Dr. Lecter, judging from the abundance of guns and ammunition he'd discovered in the trailer. There had been rifles, shotguns, and even one highly illegal machine pistol, modified for fully automatic use. A surfeit of firearms, even for Texans.  
  
But the finds that had most pleased Dr. Lecter had been the archery equipment and the fairly decent crossbow he'd discovered in the little closet near the rear of the trailer. For one thing, he despised all bow- hunters, for reasons he himself did not fully comprehend, and cared even less about. The unexpected opportunity to kill two such detested individuals had been a serendipitous enhancement of his plan to fake his own flight out of the city.  
  
And, of course, he very much favored the crossbow as a weapon. This find had pleased him most of all.  
  
He now pulled the crossbow out of the closet where he'd left it earlier, after making certain it was wound for his own use when the time came. Then he returned to the mid-section of the trailer, and chose a seat on the dinette bench closest to the trailer door.  
  
The cooling corpse of Junius Odom lay in a spreading pool of blood to the right of the door. Dr. Lecter had stationed himself to the left, half obscured in the dining nook by the jut of the oak-veneered bathroom wall. When Billy Lee returned from his trip to the restroom and entered the trailer, he would first see the blood at his feet to his right, and would then spot his deceased companion, even further right. He would look to the right, and, with any luck, would move to the right as well. Which would leave Dr. Lecter, half hidden to the left, free to watch his prey move safely inside, to find his shot at leisure, to choose his moment, perhaps to hum a few bars of a Renaissance madrigal he'd been thinking of for the past hour or so.  
  
Dr. Lecter did not have long to wait. Billy Lee returned from the restroom shortly, already shouting irritably from outside as he jerked the trailer door open.  
  
"Gawd DAMN, Junius, ain't you got the cooler up front YET?!" he bellowed, stomping up the trailer steps and stepping directly into a tendril of pooling blood that had seeped towards the door.  
  
His rubber-soled boot slipped in the viscous liquid and he pinwheeled his arms as he lost his footing on the slippery surface. His feet slipped out from under him and he did an abrupt involuntary belly flop onto the bloody linoleum floor, cracking his chin painfully as he hit and landing almost nose to nose with the dead, staring face of his former hunting buddy.  
  
"Jesus-fucking-tap-dancing-jumped-up-Christ-in-a-sidecar-Almighty-DAMN!!!" Billy Lee screeched into Junius' unresponsive visage, utterly flummoxed.  
  
The delicious black slapstick simply undid Dr. Lecter. He laughed helplessly in his hiding place, almost hard enough to compromise his aim.  
  
But not quite. He certainly knew the ideal last words for a foul-mouthed, bow-hunting, brain-dead nitwit from Texas when he heard them. The whispery twang of the crossbow sounded in the small trailer and a well-placed quarrel impaled Billy Lee Peacock through the throat, thus stilling his voice forever.  
  
Dr. Lecter rose from his place and took a moment to admire his handiwork, still chuckling. Adios, cowboys. Do give my regards to the rodeo clowns at that great celestial round-up in the sky. I guess your beer-drinking days are over.  
  
But time was a-wastin', as they said out on the Rio Grande. He bent to the corpse of Billy Lee, pinned securely to the floor by the bolt through his throat. He intended for the bodies of the two deceased Texans to be found by the Highway Patrol as soon as possible, and he wanted even the most oblivious of investigators to be able to detect the infamous hand of "Hannibal the Cannibal" at the scene instantly. He must "sign" this scene, preferably in huge block capital letters that even the thickest could decipher with ease.  
  
So he quickly excised Billy Lee's revoltingly cirrhotic liver and plopped it into the beer cooler, where it rested beside the very cans of Budweiser that had been steadily destroying it for years.  
  
He stepped into the malodorous bathroom to wash his hands and check himself for bloodstains. Once satisfied with his appearance, he came out, scanned the scene one more time, tucked the crossbow under his arm, and picked up the cooler. He carried it to the door of the trailer, now transformed into an abattoir, and out into the bright autumn day. He left the trailer door open by approximately a foot and a half.  
  
So far, so good. He put the cooler in the cab of the pick-up, noted that the truck keys were in the ignition, just as he'd thought they would be, and slid the crossbow under the seat on the driver's side. Then he went to the rear of the truck and unhitched the vehicle from the trailer, not an overly difficult maneuver.  
  
He took the time to wave gaily at a family that was enjoying a late lunch at a picnic table nearby, his white teeth flashing in a friendly smile. Then he got in the truck and drove out of the rest stop, headed north, in full view of any onlookers.  
  
He did not exit the interstate and take the service road to the southbound side of the highway for another ten miles.  
  
He did not encounter any difficulty at all as he reentered Las Vegas. He had passed fairly extensive roadblocks on the northbound side of I-10, both when he was hidden in the late Billy Lee's trailer, and again as he passed going south on the return trip. But the police were hoping to prevent his exit from the city, and had never thought to try to prevent his entry. Which was exactly what he had expected.  
  
By four thirty that afternoon, he was sipping a somewhat inferior Bordeaux at a secluded table in a dark video poker bar near Sunrise Hospital. He was waiting to see news of his efforts back at the rest stop near Nellis on the television behind the bar. He'd abandoned the pick-up (as well as Billy Lee's woefully unhealthy former liver) in the huge parking lot at the Mirage, where, he imagined, it would not be found for days.  
  
As soon as he heard his own name mentioned on television, in connection with a new and spectacular atrocity on I-10, he would know that the way was as clear as it would ever be to go and visit Clarice. He'd already purchased a lovely get-well bouquet for the occasion; it lay in a gay profusion of blossoms on the dark oak table before him, an incongruously cheerful sight in the dingy dimness of the empty, late afternoon bar.  
  
He signaled to the bartender, barely visible in the shadows near the bar. The wine was simply impossible. He'd decided to send it back and order some iced tea instead.  
  
October 16, 5:00 PM, Summerlin  
  
Judy and Margot, along with the majority of their various house guests, were watching the top story on this Monday night on the evening news.  
  
" . . . the bodies of two male tourists from Texas . . . " a blow-dried reporter was saying on the television.  
  
The reporter was standing at the curb in the rest stop on I-10, speaking urgently into a microphone, and swarms of police officers and FBI agents, plus all their equipment and vehicles, could be seen behind him. Orange plastic sawhorses encircled a ratty old trailer in the lower left half of the TV screen.  
  
" . . . witnesses claim to have seen the suspect head north on ten, away from the city . . . "  
  
A pair of stretchers, contents enclosed in black, rubberized body bags, were hauled into the open rear gates of a red and white ambulance.  
  
" . . . serial killer Lecter, also known as 'Hannibal the cannibal', thought to be . . . "  
  
Margot looked at Judy, eyebrows raised, a question in her eyes, the pale blue of her gaze somewhat darkened with distress.  
  
" . . . armed and considered extremely dangerous . . . "  
  
Judy shook her head. She pointed at the ground at her feet, an emphatic stabbing motion.  
  
Margot understood. Judy did not believe Dr. Lecter would have left Las Vegas without looking in on Starling. No matter what the news said. She believed he was still in the city, somewhere. "Right here".  
  
Judy glanced at the television screen and turned back to Margot. She silently mouthed a single word.  
  
Again, Margot understood what Judy meant. Perfectly.  
  
"Bullshit."  
  
Bullshit. Yes. They continued to watch the television, lacking anything better to do.  
  
************************************************************* 


	12. Chapter Twelve

Chapter Twelve  
  
October 16, 6:00 PM, Sunrise Hospital and Medical Center  
  
"I'd like to see Clarice Starling, please ma'am," Dr. Lecter was drawling to the nurse behind the desk on the hospital's fourth floor.  
  
He had an array of borrowed items to help him get past various obstacles and into the presence of Clarice. The borrowed "retired" cap and reading glasses he'd found at Margot's house hid his dark hair and eyes and made him look older than he was. Uncle Bob's grey suit and identification gave him an inoffensive identity. The toy he'd borrowed from Mikey's room, an enormous stuffed alligator that he'd augmented with a large shocking pink bow, drew attention away from his face quite effectively and lent him a vaguely silly air. The West Virginian twang he'd borrowed from Clarice enhanced his harmless demeanor, and would subliminally connect him to Clarice in the minds of any who'd had an opportunity to converse with her.  
  
"I'm the poor gal's Uncle Bob," he said to the duty nurse. "And I brought her a few little things to cheer her up some. Can she see folks yet?"  
  
He noted with some satisfaction the woman's amused half-smile at the stuffed alligator and the large bouquet of flowers. He could see that she was already inclined to be on his side.  
  
She leaned a bit closer to him from behind the desk, a somewhat conspiratorial gesture, as though she meant to tell him a secret. He immediately reciprocated with a corresponding inclination of his head and a slightly goofy "Uncle Bob" smile.  
  
"You're the first family that's come to see her," the nurse confided. "Been nothing but police and FBI people all day. They're all over the place."  
  
"I know! I had to show my driver's license three different times just to get up here to this floor," Dr. Lecter promptly confided back. "But I guess they want to make sure that psycho killer feller . . . what's his name . . . Fletcher? Anyhow, they probably want to make sure he doesn't come around. Pretty darn creepy if you ask me!"  
  
"Gives ME the creeps, anyway," the nurse agreed. "And it's also to keep the press out. Your poor niece! But that guy'll never show up here. No way he could, not with all these police. Besides, I saw on the news they think he killed some people out on I-10, stole a truck and hauled ass out of the city. Probably halfway to the MOON by now, what with all these Feds looking for him!"  
  
"Do you really think so?" Dr. Lecter could not resist asking. "He wouldn't come here?"  
  
"Yep. He's supposed to be a flat out loony-tune, but nobody's THAT crazy!"  
  
"A "loony-tune"? Is that right?" he asked, with another "Uncle Bob" smile. "How's Clarice been today, do you know? Has she been awake? Eating or talking or anything?"  
  
"She's been awake some, not talking that much, mostly watching television. Truth is she's not really hurt that bad, physically. But she's been through a lot, anyone can see that. She's hardly eaten anything . . . but you know why that is, don't you?"  
  
The nurse paused to lean a little closer to him and whispered one of the world's most badly kept secrets with a broad smile. "It's the hospital food . . ."  
  
Dr. Lecter laughed dutifully. Privately, he thought hospital cooking was one good argument for bypassing treatment altogether and going directly to the morgue.  
  
He also noticed that the nurse had kindly refrained from mentioning that Clarice, due to the damage he'd done to her mouth and cheekbone, was probably on a liquid diet. Sparing "Uncle Bob's" feelings. When he'd been a resident at Misericordia in Baltimore, he'd formed the opinion that most physicians were monomaniacal, arrogant obsessive-compulsives, and that it was the nursing staff in any hospital that actually kept the patients alive and their families sane.  
  
He was not best pleased to learn that Clarice had spent her day watching television. She would have seen news of his activities out on the highway, and it would not be particularly therapeutic for her to fret. She also was quite likely to be angry with him for risking the visit to the hospital, and the two dead Texans would undoubtedly add fuel to the fire. She was so absurdly indiscriminate in her regard for human life.  
  
Although he quite enjoyed Clarice's temper, and would often deliberately provoke her, today, this once, he would really rather she not be cross with him. Today he would be making some difficult decisions, and did not want to be swayed in his thoughts by her entrancing fierceness.  
  
And he had come to believe that he might never see her again after today. Given a choice, if it came to that, he'd rather see her smile a last time than see her frown.  
  
"Would you like me to take you into her room?" the nurse asked, another kind and sensitive gesture. "It's that one at the end of the hall, where the police officer is sitting outside?"  
  
Of course, he'd noticed the uniformed officer sitting on a sofa in a small waiting area at the end of the corridor as soon as he'd come off the elevator. Not a particularly prepossessing specimen, to be sure. Fidgeting, bored, quite a large man, over six feet, but clearly uncoordinated and slow. The FBI agents and the senior officers, the cream of the law enforcement crop, had been stationed at the street entrances, and were expected to prevent him from ever getting this close, close enough to confront this final inadequate barrier of a young policeman.  
  
Not that he was truly anticipated, anyway, not anymore. As he'd steadily penetrated the hospital and made his way to the fourth floor, he'd seen that all the officers, agents and guards had been issued copies of his photograph, the one from the FBI's Ten Most Wanted List. He'd also seen these photos stuffed in breast pockets and folded into belts and even discarded like yesterday's newspapers in various trash bins. Nobody seemed to be consulting them anymore.  
  
Security had become shamefully lax, just as he'd intended it should. Yet he'd felt a contradictory stab of vexation at just how badly these people were protecting Clarice. He'd briefly considered choosing an FBI agent to gut and tossing said agent out a window before he left, as an object lesson in the dangers of slipshod security, and he had not yet entirely abandoned the idea. He was having a bad day, and he was irritable. Such a whimsical diversion would cheer him up.  
  
But he was also aware that he tended to be impulsive in a foul mood, and that his taste for savagery, once activated, served its own greedy, unappeasable purpose, and could lead him into ill-considered actions. He'd decided to reserve judgment on whether or not to kill someone here today until after he'd seen Clarice.  
  
After that, it might not matter anymore what he did, or what consequences he incurred  
  
He shook his head for the nurse.  
  
"Oh, that's nice of you, ma'am, but you don't have to walk all the way down there. I'm sure you got plenty of work of your own to do. I'll just slip on down and tap at the door, see if she's awake. Will the officer let me in?"  
  
"I'll buzz him for you," the nurse said, and picked up a phone. Dr. Lecter watched as she dialed an extension, and saw the young cop at the end of the hall pick up the receiver of a telephone on an end table beside him.  
  
The nurse said "Officer, this is Penny Jackson, down here at the nurse's station?" into the phone. The police officer glanced toward the desk, and Nurse Jackson waved at him. "Ms. Starling's Uncle Bob is here to see her."  
  
She pointed to Dr. Lecter, who smiled and waved at the young cop too.  
  
"He's been through all the checkpoints already and he's okay," Penny Jackson went on. Dr. Lecter reflected that he had always liked that name, "Penny". There was something amiable and pleasant about it.  
  
"I'm gonna send him down, okay?" Penny said to the cop. "Could you let him in?"  
  
The young officer nodded in the affirmative and waved his hand in a come-on gesture, then hung up the phone.  
  
"Thank you, Nurse Jackson," Dr. Lecter said to the nurse as she too hung up. "You sure have been a help. And that's a pretty name - "Penny" - if you don't mind me saying. It's bright and cheerful, like you are."  
  
He showed her a genuine smile for the first time, one of his own, not something borrowed from "Uncle Bob". Penny flushed slightly with pleasure at the compliment.  
  
"Oh, no problem," Penny said, smiling back at him, charmed. "She's a sweet girl, and I know she'll be glad to see you. Go on down now. See if you can talk her into eating something."  
  
"I'll try," he promised, and turned away from the nurse to begin his trip down the corridor. "Thanks again . . . Penny."  
  
He saw that the policeman was watching him approach from one end of the hall, and felt Penny's eyes on him from behind. He modified his customary light, purposeful stride into something slower and less lithe for their benefit. The walk of a favorite uncle, an older man who spent much of his time fishing and perhaps smoked a pipe.  
  
The young police officer rose from his seat on the couch and met him at the door of Clarice's room. Yes, six one or two, and weighed a good two hundred pounds, somewhat muscle bound, about twenty-five or so, open, relaxed expression, mild, slightly vague gaze. Armed only with a nightstick and firearm, no Mace, no taser, radio clipped to belt on the right side. Wouldn't be that hard to subdue, should the need arise. Wearing a name tag that read "Stephen Norris". Already smiling at the stuffed toy.  
  
"Hi, Officer, I'll show you my ID - hang on a sec . . ." he said to the tall young man, and began a comical juggling act with his flowers and his alligator as he tried awkwardly to reach into his back pocket for Uncle Bob's wallet. He proffered the beribboned alligator to Officer Norris after a moment of shuffling. "Here, could you hold this for me a second?"  
  
"Oh, don't worry about it, sir," Officer Norris said, grinning, amused by "Uncle Bob's" bemused antics. "I'm sure they checked your ID downstairs. Let's knock on the door, see if your niece is awake."  
  
Dr. Lecter watched as Norris moved over to the door of room 401, ajar by an inch or two, and tapped discreetly. He followed and stood behind the young man and waited.  
  
Norris tapped again. "Miss Starling?"  
  
"Yes?"  
  
Clarice's voice. Tired and weak. The "s" sound at the end of the word pronounced mushily, as though her mouth was not working properly.  
  
Dr. Lecter was seized, at the sound of her voice, with an totally unfamiliar sense of embarrassment and profound regret. For a moment, standing behind Officer Steve Norris in the hall outside her room, he felt he could not face her, could never face her, and would have to simply leave rather than go in. He had never before felt so unutterably ashamed of himself, so completely humiliated, so craven and shaken. It was a highly unpleasant new experience, and the novelty factor did nothing to ameliorate it at all.  
  
But there was no time for hesitating at the threshold. Officer Norris swung the door open by a foot or so and popped his head into her room.  
  
"Your Uncle Bob is here, Miss," the young man said, and opened the door wide enough to reveal Dr. Lecter, standing behind him. Now he would have to play out the role he had chosen, whether he wanted to or not.  
  
"Hi, sweetie," he said as cheerfully as he could, watching her eyes widen at the sight of him and watching how they began to glitter with suppressed fury before he'd taken more than two steps past Norris and into her room. "How are you feeling? Up to some company?"  
  
She just stared at him for a moment.  
  
"Uh . . . hi, Uncle Bob," she finally said, pushing the words out with difficulty through her mangled mouth and suddenly gritted teeth. "What a surprise."  
  
"Well, I'll leave you two alone now to visit," Officer Norris said. "I'm right outside if you need anything, Miss." He moved out of the doorway and considerately shut the door behind him.  
  
Clarice and Dr. Lecter stared at each other for an excruciatingly long, uncomfortable moment.  
  
She looked horrible. The upper right half of her face was swollen and discolored, nearly black at the point of her cheekbone and around her half closed right eye. The lower left half, her chin and jawbone, was equally bad. Her lower lip was swollen and split, and there were several fine stitches around the lip line. And that was just the damage he could see. Her body looked so thin and frail, lying flat in the hospital bed.  
  
"What the FUCK - " she began to hiss quietly, infuriated, but ever aware of Officer Norris, just outside.  
  
"Well, hello, Clarice. I've brought you a friend." he interrupted. He came to her bedside swiftly and set the absurd stuffed alligator down at her side. "Michael Hannibal lent it to me. He sends his best wishes, but says he wants the alligator back as soon as you are feeling better."  
  
"Is that all you have to say?" she asked, seething.  
  
"Um. What more would you like me to say? How are you enjoying our vacation so far?"  
  
He set the bouquet of flowers in the plastic water-pitcher on her bedside table as she snorted surprised, harsh laughter and winced at the pain this caused her. There was a letter folded in among the stems, a letter he had penned in advance of this visit, and could either remove or leave in place when he left.  
  
Then he moved to the foot of her bed and took her medical charts out of the slot provided for them.  
  
"Don't make me laugh," she growled testily. "It hurts."  
  
He looked up from the charts he was reading, wincing at her comment himself. "Oh, Clarice, of course it does. I'm very sorry, I should have thought of that."  
  
He saw from the notations in her record that her fainting spell earlier this morning had been the result of exhaustion, no more, and that, overall, she was in satisfactory condition, physically. There were quite a few notations regarding her emotional symptoms, however, and these were less sanguine. His Clarice could be an excellent actress, when she needed to be, and she'd become quite adept at deflecting psychiatric probing, during her time with him.  
  
He also saw, with a renewed twinge of disgusted embarrassment, that she been given a rape kit, and a "clock test" to determine whether she'd been sexually assaulted. And that she had passed this particular test with no difficulty. Of course. He'd seen to that.  
  
A sudden, vivid memory of coming to orgasm in her arms caught him then, a total sensory recollection from one of their many consensual encounters. How she'd held his shuddering body so firmly, how she'd smiled at his intense pleasure in her, how he'd felt as though his entire being was turning inside out and reversing polarity from the core outward, how he'd cried out, how he'd buried his face in the precious living warmth of her glorious breasts, how he'd come very close to losing consciousness, as he often did with her.  
  
So beautiful. So complete. It would be so hard to give this incomparable pleasure up. He felt terribly saddened to discover that the exquisite memory, one of many, was now slightly tainted with a sense of his own culpability.  
  
He did not often endure guilt. He found it an appalling experience and fervently hoped that not all of his memories of her would be corrupted by it. He was increasingly certain that soon memories would be all that he would have left of her.  
  
"This is, without a doubt, the stupidest thing you have EVER done," she hissed fiercely, breaking into his unhappy thoughts. "What in the name of God were you thinking?"  
  
"I caught your debut on television this morning, Clarice. I noticed that you fainted. I was concerned."  
  
"Didn't you also notice the thousand and one cops and agents around here?! It's like a fucking law enforcement convention! Did THAT happen to escape your attention?"  
  
"I had other matters on my mind," he answered mildly, and uninformatively.  
  
She just glared at him, too furious, for the moment, to reply.  
  
At length, she found the bare minimum of self-control she needed in order to speak coherently.  
  
"Why the fuck did we put ourselves through all this hell? Tell me that! Just so you could get us BOTH arrested in the end? Do you have ANY idea - "  
  
"Clarice, I must point out that I DID take some steps to clear the way, after all. As I'm sure you'll have noted."  
  
He nodded at the television bolted overhead to the wall of her room, tuned to a local news station, volume muted.  
  
Her visible anger deepened, if possible.  
  
"Oh . . . oh, right, yeah, sure. Yeah, I saw that you've been fucking around out on the goddamned highway! Brilliant plan, dear, I'm TOTALLY impressed! Two dead, and for WHAT? Just so you could bring me fucking flowers in the hospital?"  
  
"Well, not just the flowers. There's the alligator. And the two . . . gentlemen you're so concerned about were a pair of country-fried idiots."  
  
She covered her bruised face with her hands, stifling a cry of pure, unadulterated wrath.  
  
"Oh, well, that's good, then," she growled from behind her hands. "I was afraid they might have been real human beings with real lives or something! So glad they were just a couple of worthless 'rubes', like me. No great loss. Of course that makes it perfectly okay!"  
  
"Clarice," he said, voice dangerously quiet. "It's always been "okay". Always. And you've always known that. You knew who I was long before you chose to cast your lot with me. Surely we need not return to this tiresome issue at this late date?"  
  
She took her hands away from her face so that she could look at him. He was dismayed to see a wave of terrible weariness dim the fire in her eyes. He watched all the anger leak out of her, leaving her limp and essentially empty, just a small battered woman in an uncomfortable hospital bed, staring at the man who'd abused her. This listless hopelessness was so much worse than any rage she could have offered him. It hurt him so much more to see.  
  
"Your insane arrogance," she commented, tones flat and final. "It'll be the death of us, in the end. You know that, don't you? Sometime, some way. If not today, then tomorrow, or the next day. It's how we got here, in this mess, in the first place. "  
  
Ah, a sharp and telling verbal blow, a direct hit to the heart. Her aim was ever impeccable. He couldn't agree more.  
  
"Clarice . . . ah, Clarice, " he murmured, head bowed. "All right. What do you wish? Tell me what you'd have me do. And I'll do it."  
  
She shrugged, tired.  
  
"Stay safe and do your part in this, like we agreed. And let me do mine," she answered, barely speaking above a whisper. "I've got a lot left to do. I'm thinking being a media whore might turn out to be a bit demanding. "  
  
"So it might," he agreed. "For whatever it's worth, Clarice, I really am sorry for how this has all turned out. I would not have had you endure such hardships."  
  
She sighed. "I know that," she said.  
  
"And what else must I do for you?"  
  
She looked at him intently, silently.  
  
"Get out of here," she answered. "Since you're asking. Get out of here while you still can. Don't get killed on your way out. Don't come back. Will you do those things for me?"  
  
"Well . . . since you're asking . . . " he replied with a wan smile.  
  
"Good. Come here first, though, okay? Before you go?"  
  
He left his place at the foot of her bed and came to her side obediently.  
  
"Closer, please," she said, a mocking smile lending her swollen features a hint of animation that he was glad to see.  
  
He bent to her. "Would you like to examine my credentials?" he teased.  
  
"No. I don't need to."  
  
"I really didn't need to either. It had been a dull day at the asylum. I was just being difficult," he confessed.  
  
"I know that, too," she said.  
  
She raised her head from her pillow and kissed him, disregarding her injured mouth. But he knew how it must have hurt her to do this. For him. A costly gesture of affection for his benefit, so that he would not have to leave believing she hated him.  
  
Ah, brave Clarice, he thought. How I've failed you. How could I ever hope to protect you from your own valor? I can't even protect you from myself.  
  
He allowed himself the time to take in her appearance, her scent, the complete essence of her presence. He'd completed the difficult decisions he'd been wrestling with as he'd first come to her door. He wanted to take as much of her away with him as he could.  
  
He would do the right thing, the best thing. This fiasco of a trip, with all its dreadful circumstances, had, nevertheless, presented rare, unexpected opportunities for her. And he, in all decency, was obligated to seize those opportunities on her behalf.  
  
So he drank her in, filling all his mind with her. The voracious, monstrously possessive aspect of his fragmented psyche sprang promptly out of its accustomed dark corner in his odd soul as he stared at Clarice, rebelling utterly against his better nature.  
  
Mine! Mine! Mine, mine, mine, mine, this remorseless portion of himself chanted furiously against his more rational thoughts, cold and angry and implacable.  
  
He was not often at war with himself. Another unusual and unpleasant experience, another unwanted novelty to round out this ghastly day.  
  
He bent his head to Clarice again, and somehow found a small, unmarked portion of her face to kiss. One last time.  
  
"Go on, now," she said, gently. "Get out of here. Please. I'm fine. I'll see you soon."  
  
"Yes," he lied. The first time he'd ever lied to her. "Soon. Good-bye, Clarice."  
  
She looked at him sharply. She'd picked up the faint whisper of some strangeness in his voice at once.  
  
"Do remember about the alligator," he joked, deliberately redirecting her attention. "Mikey wants it back, don't forget. Its name is "Eeeeurg Ba-ba", incidentally. He told me so himself. That's his current favorite word, I believe, the only one fit for such a valued associate."  
  
She smiled. He'd hoped she might. He'd wanted to see her smile.  
  
"I won't forget," she said.  
  
It was the proper time to go. There would never be a better. He committed her smile to memory and left the room without another word.  
  
He'd left the letter behind, resting in its green prison of flower stems, ready for her to find and read later.  
  
The world was a more interesting place with Clarice Starling in it. Over the past year, he had begun to believe that he would not particularly care to live in a world that did not have Clarice Starling in it. He wanted to insure that she would, indeed, continue to inhabit the world, and he had come to the conclusion, over the past long hours, that he himself was the most immediate threat to her continued existence.  
  
He need not be at her side to know she was in the world. He need not see her or touch her or hear her voice to continue to love her. Want and need were worlds apart, after all. Only a self-indulgent fool would deny that.  
  
Alone, coldly drifting and disconnected as he had been all day, he left the hospital without incident, as easily and smoothly as he'd entered it. He never expected to see Clarice Starling again.  
  
************************************************************ 


	13. Chapter Thirteen

The Lost Wages of Sin - Chapter Thirteen 

Chapter Thirteen   
  
Monday, October 16, 11:30 PM, Summerlin   
  
Dr. Lecter was out by the pool again, sitting on the ground as he had so much earlier in the day, and as he often did when he was troubled. He found the poolside a more appealing environment in which to wait for time to pass than the secluded but cramped attic room Margot had given him. Though it had been close to ten years since he'd last seen the inside of a prison cell, he was still uncomfortable in confined spaces. 

  
The evening weather was pleasing to him too, and he'd wanted to be outside to enjoy it. There was a melancholy loveliness abroad in the night that suited his frame of mind. A cold breeze with a hint of ice in it had blown in from the north, and clouds scudded across the night sky ahead of the wind, slate grey on black, alternately shrouding and revealing the pale golden light of the Harvest moon above and its coldly twinkling coterie of stars.   
  


Shadow and light. He was watching the stars in particular on this crisp autumn night, with its presentiments of winter in the wind.   
  


In an hour, he would board a private chartered business flight, again, courtesy of Margot Verger. This flight would take him to Los Angeles, where he would land in the small, private-planes-only Van Nuys Airport. From L.A., or San Pedro, to be exact, he would board a ship bound for South America, tomorrow. He'd booked a last minute cancellation passage on a two week murder mystery cruise. The irony of this particular travel arrangement was faintly amusing to him. He wondered if any of the amateur sleuths that would be aboard the vessel would succeed in determining who the murderer was before he would jump ship in Rio.   
  


A taxi would be coming to pick him up soon, within a half hour or so. In the hours since he'd left the hospital, he'd had time to activate one of the many paper identities he had created for just such emergencies as this, and had stashed away in various countries against future trouble. He'd accessed the funds attached to this particular identity by phone, and the assorted documents and credit cards and identification he would need to travel would be overnighted to a post office box in Los Angeles, ready for him to pick up in the morning. Uncle Bob's wallet and suit (cleaned and pressed, as had been promised) had been "found" and returned to that sandwich-making gentleman earlier in the evening.   
  


So there was really nothing left for him to do but wait. He sat in the same obscure corner by the pool he had chosen just after dawn on this long Monday, savoring the faint bitter edge in the autumn wind and trying to quell the thought of how empty the mansion in Buenos Aires might seem when he at last returned to it.   
  


"Hello? Are you out here, doctor?"   
  


Judy Ingram's voice, recalling him from a reverie that was fast becoming unpleasant.   
  


He rose from his nest of shadows before answering her, so that she could see him. He did not wish to startle one of his gracious hostesses with a voice out of the dark.   
  


"Miss Ingram? I'm here. Has my taxi come so early?" 

  
The petite, pleasantly rounded brunette walked to the covered deck to join him, carrying a small nylon duffel bag.   
  


"No, it's not the cab. I just thought I'd bring you this. We weren't sure where you were. Margot said you might be out here."   
  


She came a little closer, and held out the bag to him, waiting patiently until he took it.   
  


"Thank you," he said. "What is it?"   
  


"Oh, just some stuff you might need, overnight. Um . . . may I sit?"   
  


"Miss Ingram. Of course." He waved at a deck chair and waited until she sat down before taking a seat near her.   
  


Once they were both seated, he unzipped the bag and looked inside. He saw a few simple toiletries, a toothbrush and razor and the like, some extra pairs of socks, clean underwear, pajamas, a travel clock, a wireless phone.   
  


"I noticed you didn't have any of this kind of stuff for your trip. You might not want to hassle with picking anything up tonight."   
  


"You're very kind, Miss Ingram. This was thoughtful. Thank you. But I greatly fear that poor Uncle Bob may have been robbed on my behalf once again."   
  


"Yeah, too bad for him you're the same size, more or less. Don't worry about it. He'll never know."   
  


"I've been told that crime doesn't pay, Miss Ingram."   
  


She smiled. "Maybe you're a bad influence. Would you consider calling me Judy?"   
  


"I'd consider it a pleasure. Thank you, again, Judy."   
  


"Uh . . . Margot and I feel terrible about everything that's happened. I wanted 

to tell you that."   
  


"You simply invited us to a party, Judy. There's no ill will in that. We appreciated the invitation, and we were glad to come. You have nothing to feel terrible for."   
  


She shifted in her chair a bit, and looked out into the night.   
  


"I want to ask you something, but . . . " she said, and then trailed off.   
  


"Yes? But what?"   
  


"I'm afraid it'll seem rude. Margot says rudeness just drives you batshit."   
  


He laughed. "That's one way of putting it, I suppose. How essentially Margot! I will admit to being . . . intractable on the subject, Judy, but rudeness is largely a matter of intent. I can hardly believe that YOUR intentions could ever be objectionable. What was it you wanted to ask me?"   
  


"I don't really know you well enough to be asking . . . so, maybe I'll tell you something first. How would that be?"   
  


"Familiar. I like it when people tell me things. Please go on."   
  


She smiled. "You were born to be a shrink, I think. You have the touch. I've seen about a hundred different therapists, believe me, over the years. Being gay, coming out, all those things just breed therapy. Thought I might go into it myself, one day."   
  


"Forgive me for saying, but you lack the necessary detachment. You have the intelligence and the insight, but there is too much compassion in you to tinker effectively with the emotions of others. It takes a certain callousness to do that."   
  


"Yeah, you're right. I thought so too, so I never seriously pursued it.   
  


"What was it that you wanted to tell me?"   
  


"About Margot. I wanted to tell you about Margot and me. The first time I saw Margot, I was . . . you know . . . afraid of her."   
  


"Were you? Why?"   
  


She smiled. "Why was I afraid of her? Or why would I tell you this?"   
  


"Take your pick."   
  


"Oh, yeah, you're a shrink all right!" She laughed, perhaps a little grimly. 

"Okay. I thought she was the most haunted woman I'd ever met. The body-building, the steroids, the tough mouth and the hurt eyes. Talk about baggage! And all that rage, simmering away just below the surface. I knew right away she must have seen some terrible places in her life, was still seeing them, in a way. . . but all that wasn't the scary part."   
  


"No? What was the scary part?"   
  


"It was the way I just knew, almost from first sight, that I was just . . . desperate to be with her. And how I knew I would always feel that way, like I could see my whole life ahead of me, for a moment. There were a hundred different reasons not to even think about getting involved with her, and I could see them all, in perfect detail. Twenty-twenty rational vision."   
  


"And that frightened you?" he asked, watching her closely. "That you knew she would be so hard to love?"   
  


"No. I was scared because none of that mattered. I saw her, I talked to her, and I was gone. Just like that. For me, all of a sudden, she was . . . what water is to thirsty people. It was scary to feel so irrational, and to be so powerless to do a damn thing about it. Love, real love, it's not some syrupy Valentine card emotion like they tell you. It's this titanic, awesome force that can move the world, like wind or fire. A miracle and a disaster and a revelation, all at the same time. It's like being crazy."   
  


She glanced at him quickly, a bit embarrassed by the depth of passion she had revealed to him, this feared and infamous man whom she knew only slightly. She folded her neat brown hands in her lap and stared at them silently for a time, and then went on, not raising her head.   
  


"But it's also like suddenly being handed some cosmic key you don't really know how to use," she said quietly, and found the will to raise her head and look him in the eye as she continued.   
  


"The key to everything, just lying there in your imperfect hand. And you just know that key can unlock every door there is, even the ones you're afraid to open. Especially those. But you want to. Unlock the doors, unlock 'em all, even though you know that maybe you shouldn't. You know you want to use that key, that's ALL you want, that's all you ever wanted."   
  


Lecter's eyes were on Judy's faintly blushing face, but his truest vision gazed intently into a barren internal landscape, only recently beginning to flower and fruit and thaw, only within the past twelve astounding months. He examined and verified the complex pattern he saw there.   
  


"Yes," he agreed after a long pause, voice barely audible. It was hard to tell whether he was speaking to Judy, or to himself. "Yes. Oh, yes. That's how it is . . . "   
  


Judy smiled, and then shrugged, an attractive, strangely Gallic gesture. C'est la vie.   
  


"So . . . THAT was the scary part," she said, and grinned.   
  


"You're very frank, Judy," Dr. Lecter said, smiling back. Judy Ingram's grins were a minor force of nature unto themselves. It was impossible not to respond to them.   
  


"You've been honest with me," he went on. "And much more important, I suspect you are one of those rare and wonderful people who are always scrupulously honest with themselves. What was it you wanted to ask me, Judy? Please tell me. I'll try to match your candor, if I can."   
  


She took a deep breath and set herself, like a diver about to swan off the high board.   
  


"Did you tell Starling you were leaving her? Did you ask her about it?"   
  


Tension immediately crackled through the small space between the two of them, like electricity arcing, the way it does when an intruder attempts to breach an electrically charged perimeter fence.   
  


All visible expression drained out of Dr. Lecter's face, like rainwater seeping quickly away into the earth. Nothing was left behind but a flat impenetrable surface, a pale, featureless mask with glittering eyes.   
  


Judy trembled visibly at this fearsome transformation, but she did not drop her gaze.   
  


"Have you thought about what you're doing? Have you counted the costs? All of them?"   
  


Dr. Lecter knew that Judy was not a stupid woman. He saw that she was aware that she was questioning his judgment, and knew this to be a wildly risky venture, at best. He could be out of his seat and at her throat in a heartbeat, and she was seeing, for the first time in their short acquaintance, this potential in him clearly. But he imagined that she was a woman well accustomed to putting her faith in doubtful causes, and rather suspected her faith might be at least as unwavering as his will.   
  


The moment stretched, strength matched to strength, powerful opposing forces poised in a precise balance.   
  


Good manners, in the end, provided the best path away from confrontation. It would be unthinkably churlish to offer violence to this woman who had opened her heart and her home to him, a virtual stranger, at some considerable risk to herself, Dr. Lecter decided. Besides, in his estimation, she was the victor in this particular skirmish. He must accept defeat as gracefully as he might contrive. He gathered his thoughts, assembling them into the candid answers he had promised her.   
  


"Judy. No, I didn't tell her. Time was short, and frankly, I don't believe I could have entertained argument without being swayed from my course. I'll confess, Clarice can talk me into nearly anything. Rather a disturbing ability of hers, in my opinion. I've made every effort not to let her find out, but I sometimes think she knows."   
  


He smiled, fondly, a wrenching smile that was awful to see, and could, perhaps, have drawn blood. He went on.   
  


"I might have been persuaded to abandon this course. And that would have been fatal, ultimately. I do not propose to allow her to continue to pay the price for MY choices. At least, no more than she already has, no more than she'll be obliged to, in the coming weeks. I've incurred these costs, she has not. QED. We must part ways."   
  


"But - " Judy started to object.   
  


Dr. Lecter interrupted her. "I'm not a good man, Judy. I'm neither kind nor forgiving, neither gentle nor caring, and I've been given the blood-soaked public name I bear because I've put my own faith in the premise that one must do as one wills. I've been called 'inhuman' and 'monster' and similar things, and these terms are not inappropriate; I could not reasonably refute any of them, nor would I ever care to. But I can love, I've discovered, and I will no longer permit the one I love to pay my debts. And I know you can understand all I've said. You've already shown me that."   
  


He showed her a wolfish smile, a sight that only a very few had survived. 

"Pretend you don't, Judy, and I shall be quite vexed with you, I'm afraid."   
  


Judy blinked as she took this last razor-edged remark in, along with its implications. But she mastered her fear and answered him anyway.   
  


"Yes, you're a scary guy, and I'm sticking my nose in where it doesn't belong and you're pissed about it and you've got some cause, and I'm good and scared right now, if that makes you feel any better."   
  


She leaned forward in her deck chair, narrowing the charged space between them, coming dangerously close to invading his side of the psychic chessboard, and holding him in the stern gaze she occasionally transfixed Margot with.   
  


"But I'm gonna tell you this anyway: You are making a mistake. You're wrong about this. Don't do it."   
  


Her words hung in the air for what seemed an unnaturally long time, as though they had somehow amassed weight and substance, had taken on the significance of prophecy.   
  


The two gazed at each other in the odd portentous silence that followed, both a bit puzzled to find themselves in such intimate communication, in so short a time, on such short acquaintance. It occurred to both of them in the same moment, though they didn't know it, that they might have far more in common than would have seemed probable to either of them, before this conversation had begun.   
  


Dr. Lecter smiled, breaking the peculiar moment, amused. "How odd. You don't LOOK stubborn, unyielding, and opinionated."   
  


Judy giggled, and the tension broke for her too. "I know. I look like a hobbit. It takes everybody in."   
  


"An admirable camouflage. I rather envy it, to be quite honest. I apologize for losing my temper with you, Judy. Can we agree to disagree? Without being disagreeable?"   
  


"I guess we'd better."   
  


"Good. I think it's - "   
  


He cut himself short as he noticed Margot approaching the pool from the house.   
  


"Doctor Lecter," she said, as soon as she was close enough to speak quietly. "Your cab is here. I told the driver to pull around in the driveway. We can go around the back of the house to meet him."   
  


None of them wanted to risk a chance encounter with any of Judy and Margot's houseguests by going through the public rooms of the house. Margot pulled a flashlight out of her jacket pocket to light their way.   
Dr. Lecter and Judy rose from their seats, very nearly simultaneously.   
  


"Thank you, Margot," he said, matching her quiet tones. "Just give me a moment, I'll be right with you."   
  


He turned to Judy. "It's been . . . interesting, coming to know you, Judy. You've surprised me, and I cannot often say that. I hope we'll meet again."   
  


"I do too. Next time, maybe we can play some checkers or something. Will you please give what I said some thought?"   
  


"I doubt I'll be able to avoid it. I do appreciate your kindness, I hope you know that."   
  


"Sure," she said, a trifle hoarsely, as though she might be on the verge of tears. "Well. It's damn cold out here. I'm going inside. Good-bye, Dr. Lecter. Good luck."   
  


"Luck to you as well. Good-bye, Judy."   
  


She turned away from them and walked toward the lights of the house, warm and inviting in the chilly fall night. Just a small, plump woman who looked like a hobbit and had the all the faith and the fervor of a secular saint. Dr. Lecter experienced an instant of biting envy toward Margot, who'd found such an extraordinary partner, and who would go home to her love after he was on his way, leaving his own love behind.   
  


He put this jealousy aside. It was petty and stupid.   
  


"Lead on, Margot. You look a bit like the Statue of Liberty with that flashlight, you know. And you've presided over a safe harbor for me. I remain in your debt."   
  


They passed around the dark side of the house, and out to the taxi the waited in the drive. Dr. Lecter hovered outside the rear door for a moment, staring at Margot.   
  


"Margot, I . . . I'd like to ask you another favor . . . " he paused, uncharacteristically hesitant.   
  


But Margot knew what he wanted.   
  


"We'll look out for her, I promise," she said. "If you're really gonna do this stupid thing, fine, we can do that much for you. She'll have friends, she wont have to be alone if she doesn't want to be. And we'll keep you posted, let you know if there's trouble. I wish you wouldn't do this! I'd set fire to myself before I'd ever leave Judy."   
  


"You've never harmed Judy, and you never will. Alas, I cannot say the same. Good-bye, Margot. Thank you so much for all your help."   
  


He opened the door and got in the cab, the small nylon duffel bag his only luggage. He'd come to Las Vegas with so much more. One often left Las Vegas the poorer, as everyone knew.   
  


He rolled down the window and leaned out.   
  


"Oh, and Margot?" he called out. "Just one more thing. Lovely party."   
  


Margot snorted, almost out of sight in the darkness, and declined to answer as she walked away, back toward her home.   
  


And then Dr. Lecter was gone.   
  
  


October 17, 12:00 Midnight, Sunrise Hospital and Medical Center   
  


Clarice Starling stood, thin and ghostly in her hospital gown, at her window. She was looking out into the endless night beyond, a vast empty blackness, just on the other side of the thin glass.   
  


She was trembling, shuddering uncontrollably as she spasmodically crushed and released the handwritten letter in her hands. Tears spilled out of her eyes and stained her cheeks and stung when they touched the cuts on her face. Every so often she would rest her forehead on the glass of the window, and would close her burning eyes, trying to take some small comfort from the feel of the cool glass against her hot face.   
  


She was likewise attempting to discern some viable answers in the mystery of the hollow night beyond her window. There must be some pattern, some clue in the configuration of the stars in the heavens, in the light of the moon, in the movement of the night clouds, if one could just SEE it. Did people wink in and out of existence in this universe for no reason at all? Was there random joy and pain and endless effort and then just nothing? What malign, mad Creator would devise such a pointless game?   
  


She'd already called Margot Verger's house, only a few minutes too late. She'd dropped the phone receiver from nerveless hands, her fingers too numb to close around the suddenly unfamiliar object. She hadn't noticed and the phone had beeped relentlessly from the floor for some minutes, as though in reproach at being cast off so.   
  


She opened the crumpled letter in her hands, the ink smudged in spots by the pressure of her convulsively working palms.   
  


What would she do now? She didn't know. She didn't know.   
  


She read the letter again, the familiarity of the hand cutting into the quick of her as she read, standing at her window with the night turning cold outside.   
  
_"Dearest Clarice:   
  
_

_Immediately following the words 'Lazarus come forth,' we are told, a divine miracle occurred.   
  
You and I, though, must content ourselves with an earthly marvel. Through the random workings of fate, as well as the blind malice and greed of our late friend Dr. Doemling, you, like Lazarus, have been resurrected.   
  
How does that feel, Clarice? To be reborn? Have you thought about it yet?   
  
I have. Do something for me now, as you read, please. Rise out of your hospital bed. You're well enough. I expect it's uncomfortable for you anyway; you've never enjoyed lying about. Go to your window. Are you there? Look out.   
  
What can you see? The "Strip"? Possibly. Not the place I would have preferred to start, but as good a beginning as any. What else? The mountains to the west? The desert all around? The city? The airport? Is it dark out now, Clarice? Can you see the stars?  
  
Just after my escape from custody, I enjoyed a brief stay in the __Marcus__Hotel__ in __St. Louis__. I wrote to you from there, do you remember that? I looked out my window that night, for the first time in many years, just as you are looking out yours now. I wrote to you then, in part, to tell you what I'd seen. And now I'll tell you what you see.   
  
Freedom. Wherever you look, there, if you wish, you can go. As yourself, Clarice, for the first time since we left Muskrat Farm together, over a year ago. You may move about freely in that great open night you see, as any citizen might. You need not concern yourself with concealment or risk or danger as you consider the dizzying myriad of choices now open before you. You need not concern yourself with these things ever again.   
  
Clarice, you have escaped. The gates of your prison of obscured identity and the semblance of death have inadvertently been thrown wide, and you must walk through them. Please, try to remember that freedom, even freedom unsought and unexpected, is, nevertheless, precious. A fruit of rare savor that you could never have hoped to taste again, not so you long as you remained at my side.   
  
I myself chose the path I now tread, through my own actions, and have long since made my peace with the consequent narrowness of my way. Must you, then, be held to this same narrow fugitive's path as well; a way that, as we have recently seen, leads only to a predestined end? What terrible crimes have you committed, Clarice?   
  
Has loving me been a crime? I would rather not judge it so, dear Clarice. Not now. You yourself have taught me, over time, that judgment, untempered by compassion, is rarely truly just. I've had your compassion. Now I ask only that you offer yourself the same matchless gift.   
  
I'm leaving. I ask that you stay behind and rediscover your own life, your own fate. Persephone rejoined the world of the living, and now, so can you. It's an improbable opportunity. Seize it.   
  
You'll have to, actually. If you, famous media heroine that you'll soon become, were to "vanish" a second time, there would be no place on earth where we could hide from those who would rescue you from me. It was easy for your former FBI jailers to dismiss the disappearance of a single unwanted and despised agent. That will no longer be the case.   
  
Should you think of rushing to rejoin me, perhaps so that we might debate this course of action I've chosen further, please think of the hue and cry it would cause before you do. Lead the world to my door if you will, Clarice, but don't do it by accident or by rash action.   
  
I expect you'll be angry with me for making this decision for you. I can almost hear your tart commentary now, little Starling, and the phrases "high-handed", "arrogant", "egotistical", and other, less printable utterances come to mind.   
  
Am I right? How delicious. How I'll miss your gift for vivid vituperation.   
  
Perhaps you'll consider that I've abandoned you, as others have done before. Not so. Look out your window again. Can you see the stars?   
  
If you remember that I love you as you wander the wide world, fully open to you once again, I'll know. When some beauty pierces your heart, I'll see it too. When some joy moves you to laughter, I'll hear your voice. We cannot be entirely separated by mere distance or time.   
  
You do see the stars, don't you?   
  
I see them too. Some of our stars will always be the same, my Clarice.   
  
- H.   
_  
***************************************************


	14. Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fourteen  
  
October 18, 11:00 AM, Sunrise Hospital and Medical Center, Main Entrance  
  
It was a grey Tuesday morning in Las Vegas, windy and haunted by a light drizzle, not unusual for early fall in Southern Nevada.  
  
Margot Verger, Clarice Starling, and a very overwhelmed hospital orderly were trying to make their way through the scores of media vultures that had assembled outside the main entrance to record for posterity (and for the evening news) Starling's discharge from the hospital.   
  
Margot was using her size and bulky strength to bull-doze a path through the crowds, and Clarice was fidgeting in her wheelchair, an insurance-related precaution that all hospitals insist on for departing patients. The orderly, a shy newcomer to the US from Jamaica, goggled at the array of cameras and microphones and correspondents and tried to concentrate on pushing the wheelchair.  
  
The three were on their own against the press corps. The hospital, the police, and the FBI, annoyed with Starling due to earlier events, had withdrawn any support.  
  
How had the press known when and where to gather?   
  
Clarice asked herself this question rhetorically, and with some irritation. She really knew the likely answers. Someone on the hospital staff must have ratted her out to the media. Or possibly someone with the Bureau. Or the Las Vegas PD. Or maybe her own S.O.B. of a doctor.  
  
Yesterday, she had refused to authorize or participate in a pre-arranged press conference, ostensibly organized by the Sunrise Hospital public relations department, but obviously really designed by FBI spin-doctors.   
  
Not that the hospital would have sneered at the opportunity for some free ink; she'd had no doubt that her recent team of medical practioners would have been delighted to cooperate with the Bureau, especially the psychologists, who had probably all had the words "book-deal . . . book-deal . . . book-deal . . ." waltzing gaily through their heads just before they dropped off to sleep for the past few nights.  
  
She had refused rather vehemently.  
  
A glamorous fellow from the Bureau had come to visit Starling just after breakfast yesterday morning. He'd introduced himself brightly, giving a name but no job description. The Bureau's PR consultants operated in relative obscurity, it being bad PR for a law-enforcement agency to visibly concern itself with PR. Something of a Catch-22.  
  
He'd been a glossy gentleman about Starling's age, with a razor-cut hair style and a perfect Prada suit and a truckload of plastic solicitude.   
  
My God, it's The Attack of the Living Ken Dolls, Clarice had thought, and winced as her injured mouth stretched into a grim smile.  
  
Ken, or Chip, or Brandon, or whatever his stupid name had been, had responded to her pained smile with a dazzling display of his own capped pearly whites and asked if she felt up to going over some of questions that might come up in the press conference later that afternoon. And some of her answers to those questions, if that would be all right?  
  
In retrospect, Starling had to admit to herself that she had been in a nasty frame of mind that Tuesday morning. She was hurting, she was confused, and above all, she'd been in a continuous low-grade fury since around midnight the night before, the kind of impotent, hair-trigger temper that makes one wish desperately for some hapless victim to punch out.  
  
Someone, anyone. Anyone at all. Brian, or Jason, or Binky of the FBI, or whatever, had been made to order.  
  
"What press conference would that be?" she'd asked the image consultant whiz, voice deceptively even and well-modulated.  
  
"Oh, didn't they tell you?" he'd answered, clear hazel eyes widening innocently. "The hospital public-relations people thought it would be best. With all the publicity surrounding your . . . urm . . . harrowing ordeal, it seemed like an organized info-event might be the politic way to go. We're thinking, for instance, spin-wise, it might be a good thing if you avoided mentioning the Lecter name."  
  
"Info-event", she had repeated to herself mentally, feeling an odd pulsing sensation behind her eyes. "Politic way to go." "Harrowing ordeal" "Spin-wise" "The Lecter name."  
  
She'd slowly and deliberately gotten up from her bed, swinging her bare knees over the edge and setting her bare feet on the cool linoleum floor. She took a moment to reflect that it was a lucky thing for her visitor that she was currently armed with nothing more lethal than a hospital gown, and had then stood up.  
  
"Tell you what," she'd said to her salon-tanned guest, handsome as a movie star. "I'd like for you to take me to the movies and then to dinner, if you don't mind."  
  
"Excuse me, Agent Starling?" he'd asked, puzzled.  
  
"Dinner and a movie, you know," she'd continued, the volume of her voice rising even as its temperature plunged. "Because, you see, Hannibal the Cannibal's been fucking me blind for a solid year. Before that, the Bureau had been fucking me cross-eyed for a good TEN years. And now YOU want to fuck me too, Binky-baby, and this time I BY GOD WANT DINNER AND A MOVIE FIRST!"  
  
"Miss Starling!" he'd gasped, rising from his chair, green eyes now wide enough to clearly show the edges of his contacts. "Please try to - "  
  
"GET OUT OF MY ROOM, YOU CAPPED-TOOTHED, CALVIN KLEIN, FRAT-RAT MOTHERFUCKER," she'd shrieked. "BEFORE I PINCH YOUR HAIR-GELLED PUBLIC RELATIONS FBI HEAD OFF!!!"  
  
Binky had scrambled out of her room as though the very hounds of Hell were after him. Afterwards, no one from the Bureau, or the hospital, or anywhere else, had dared to utter the words "press conference" in her presence again.  
  
Clarice had burst out laughing as she watched the terrorized press agent scuttle out and away down the hall, and had then lapsed into a violent crying jag that lasted until Margot Verger had shown up unexpectedly, a half hour later.  
  
She'd been horribly embarrassed to be caught crying like that, but she hadn't been able to stop, and that had frightened her rather badly.  
  
Margot had matter-of-factly settled herself in a chair beside Clarice's bed and passed her Kleenex and insisted that Clarice must come and stay with her and Judy when she got out of the hospital the next day. At least until she'd had a chance to figure out what she was going to do.  
  
Clarice's crying jag had brought on a humiliating case of the hiccups, and she'd agreed to do as Margot wished, too tired and too occupied with sobbing and hiccupping to form cogent arguments against it.  
  
Now Clarice and Margot were shoving their way through a knot of cameras, mikes and reporters, trying to get to the limo Margot had wisely arranged to have waiting.  
  
Margot Verger was a recognizable public figure in her own right. The press detected a fascinating human-interest angle in her association with Starling at once, considering her own status as surviving family to a high-profile Lecter victim. Dozens of shouted questions peppered the air outside the Sunrise Hospital.  
  
"Hey, you're Margot Verger, right?"  
  
"Margot, how'd you and Starling meet?"  
  
"Are you going into Federal Custody, Ms. Starling?"  
  
"What's your part in this, Ms. Verger?"  
  
"What would you say to Lecter if you could, Margot?"  
  
"What about you, Clarice?"  
  
"Are you concerned for your safety, Ms. Starling? Ms. Verger?"  
  
"Do either of you think he might come back?"  
  
Clarice thought back to the time immediately after she had shot and killed Jame Gumb, known among the Fourth Estate as "Buffalo Bill". She had been forced to run similar mobs of media representatives every time she'd set foot outside of private property for several weeks, and during that time she'd learned an interesting fact. She'd discovered that photo-journalists, fairly early on in their careers, learn to ask the most provocative, incendiary questions possible in street situations. They do not expect to have any of these questions answered, really. But they do expect to generate vivid photos by angering, frightening, or even just startling their subjects into unguarded facial expressions.  
  
Starling wondered what her own face might be revealing in response to that last shouted question.  
  
Margot stepped up to the plate.  
  
"As far as I can tell," she said to the crowd in a clear, carrying voice. "Hannibal Lecter might run for fucking President for all the FBI can do to stop him."  
  
She paused for effect, allowing the reporters a moment to record the sarcastic and vivid sound-bite. Flashbulbs strobed like sheet lightning.  
  
"They couldn't keep him out of Las Vegas, and they couldn't keep him in, either," she went on. "They couldn't protect the citizens of this city, they couldn't protect my brother, and they sure as hell couldn't protect Ms. Starling here, and she was one of their own agents. That sick bastard's been holding her captive for a whole year, and they haven't even gotten around to listing her as kidnapped yet."  
  
Pens scribbled, mini-recorders whirred, and audiotape rolled. This was primo stuff.  
  
"Now," Margot said. "I've offered her my home, and all my resources in terms of private security, and I'll do what the FBI either couldn't, or wouldn't, do. I'll show her a little human decency, and give her a safe place to start the healing process."  
  
Margot paused again while Starling struggled to control her face, which was attempting to arrange itself into a cynical grin. Margot was sharp, all right. Take that, G-men! Hell hath no fury . . .  
  
The one question Margot had been waiting to hear rose above the general wrack of inquiry.  
  
"Why, Ms. Verger? Why are you willing to help Ms. Starling this way?"  
  
"In memory of my late beloved brother, Mason," Margot said, lifting her chin, looking every inch the grieving sister. "It's what he would have wanted. He'd have done the same himself, if only he were here."  
  
It was the perfect exit line, and besides, both Margot and Clarice were in imminent danger of bursting into ugly guffaws. They continued to push their way toward the curb and the waiting limo, and finally managed to get inside the luxurious vehicle, away from the melee of clicking cameras and cawing reporters outside. The Jamaican orderly was left behind at the curb, more or less ignored by the media mob, and hoping fervently that HE would never become famous in America, not as long as he lived.  
  
Margot and Clarice both sank into the plush seats gratefully and looked at each other as the driver pulled the limo away from the hospital.  
  
"My 'late, beloved brother' would have staked you out naked in the fucking pig-pen and posted photos on every billboard on the planet, if only he were here," Margot commented to Starling.  
  
"I know. With a hand-painted bull's-eye taped to my ass, and maybe an 'Eat at Mason's' sign on the barn door, if he'd have thought that might work," Clarice agreed, starting to giggle in jagged, manic bursts.  
  
Margot snorted laughter too. "Just like Wile E. Coyote and his 'free bird seed'! WOULD that have worked, do you think?"   
  
"Maybe. Dr. Lecter might have killed himself laughing," Clarice answered, still chuckling. "Meep, meep, Mason."  
  
The image of Mason as a faceless Coyote sucking his air from an Acme respirator, and that of Dr. Lecter as some sinister version of the Roadrunner, were both wildly inappropriate and strangely apt. Both women relaxed and allowed themselves the mean-spirited guffaws they had not wanted the cameras to record earlier.  
  
Clarice's was dismayed to realize that her own laughter was wavering on the knife's edge of weeping, just as it had when she'd thrown that glossy Bureau flack out of her room, the day before. She looked out the car window and watched the city roll past as she tried to ease back.  
  
She had quite a weakness for vintage Warner Brothers cartoons, and would occasionally rent a stack of cartoon videos and commune with Bugs and the gang over a bowl of corn flakes on Saturday mornings. When Dr. Lecter had ferreted out this particular penchant of hers, his delighted teasing had been relentless and without mercy. He'd given her a complete set of the cartoon videos (including some very rare and hard-to-find ones) on the very next gift-giving occasion he could contrive, as well as a gallon of chocolate milk and a pair of pink flannel pajamas with feet. But from that time forward, he'd also left a bowl of fresh cut strawberries in the fridge every Friday night. Just in case she might want them for her cereal.  
  
Her chuckles tapered off and she had to clamp down hard to keep them from being transmuted to sobs by the passage through her hurt, the way light is bent and distorted when it shines through a prism.  
  
My prism of pain, she thought, mocking herself savagely. Well, isn't that just about the most poetic thing you ever heard? Aren't I just the ONE? I could go to work for Hallmark!   
  
One of the many new potentials and opportunities open before me now. I'll make a new career writing fiendishly depressing captions for a new line of woeful greeting cards!  
  
She was certain her absent S.O. would love such a line of cards and would be in a perfect frenzy to send them to all his old pals in the Bureau and the asylum and the Maryland correctional system. Those that still had above-ground addresses, anyway. When you care enough to send the very best . . .   
  
"Starling?"  
  
Clarice turned away from her window and looked at Margot. She saw that Margot looked almost embarrassed, as though she might be about to confess some failing or misdeed.  
  
"For whatever it's worth, we really did try to talk him out of this. I just don't want you to think we helped him because either of us agreed with him. Judy even told him he was making a mistake."  
  
"Did she?" Clarice asked, with a grim smile. "THAT must have been an . . . edgy conversation. I'd like to have seen it. Margot, I want you to listen to me now. I want you to hear me. Tell Judy too. I do not have any kind of a problem with anything you did, I promise you. I don't blame either of you in any way."  
  
She laughed, a brittle, ironic little laugh, and went on. "Hannibal Lecter is my . . . boyfriend. Sounds like the premise for a comedy skit, doesn't it? God help us. Anyway, I'm saying I know what he's like, Margot, none better. And I know exactly how useless it would have been to try to talk him into, or out of, anything. Might as well try to persuade a twister not to blow down your house."  
  
Margot smiled. "Judy tells me the little chat they had was pretty much just like that."  
  
"I can imagine. He seriously hates being questioned. And he doesn't believe that he makes mistakes. Hell, most of the time he doesn't."  
  
"Looks to me like he made a big one here," Margot said. "Just so you know what I think about it."  
  
"He's not really much for half measures, Margot. All or nothing. Best or worst. Life or death. Yes or no . . . I'll tell you a little secret, if you want. Sometimes I think that the smarter the individual, the more spectacularly bone-headed the mistakes."  
  
"They say Lecter's a genius," Margot commented, smiling.  
  
"I rest my case," Clarice answered. Her own amused smile was heartbreaking in its sorrow, and in its enduring affection. Judy Ingram would have recognized this smile. She had seen its twin cross Hannibal Lecter's features only two nights past, as he had spoken of Clarice.  
  
"What will you do now, Starling?" Margot asked her, more so that she would not have to continue to look at that terrible, beautiful smile than because she thought there might be a ready answer.  
  
"I don't know. I can't do any of the things that I want, he's seen to that. He's got me completely boxed in. Always clever, don't you know, even in something as wrong as this. Always a step or two ahead of me. It's damned tiring, to tell you the truth. I'm damned tired."   
  
Starling's face hardened as some of the betrayed anger she'd been suppressing spilled out of its hastily contrived and flimsy containment.   
  
"In spite of everything, he actually HAS done me a favor, in a very real way. Maybe what I really ought to do is send him a thank-you note," she remarked coldly. "At least it would be polite. He likes 'polite'."  
  
Margot recognized the edged ice in Starling's tone. She had heard ITS twin in Dr. Lecter's voice, when he had first greeted the doomed Everett Doemling in her study, just before dawn on a long Monday morning.  
  
She had a sudden, frighteningly clear image of Clarice Starling, twenty or thirty years from today, as a blighted, beautiful middle-aged woman, remote and untouchable as the horizon, crystallized in an early frost, like a wild spring rose that had bloomed out of season and had been both destroyed and preserved by a killing snow.  
  
He's killed her, Margot thought to herself, strangely shocked. Or he will have. In his effort to protect her. Doesn't he KNOW that?  
  
Was he so utterly damned by his own nature that all he could ever do was destroy? That every action he took and every hope he harbored must inevitably come to the same deadly end, regardless of his intentions? What hellish sort of world was it that laid such horrific curses on its inhabitants?  
  
"Margot? May I ask you something, now?"  
  
Margot nodded slowly, still somewhat bound by her disturbing vision of a future Starling, of a lovely icebound ghost with a ruined heart.   
  
"Why are you really doing this?" Starling waved her hand at the car, the driver, the drizzly, overcast day outside. "All of this? Helping me, I mean. You hardly know me, and you don't really owe me anything."  
  
"It's not a matter of debts, Starling," Margot replied, remembering that she had tried to explain the exact same thing, in almost the exact same words, to Dr. Lecter only the day before yesterday. How alike he and Starling were, in so many ways. Neither of them readily understood that kindness could be an end in itself.   
  
"I can tell you this," Margot went on. "I don't know if it'll make things better or worse, but almost the last thing he did before he left was ask me to be your friend."  
  
Clarice stared at Margot, and the tears she had been fighting all morning and all the night before welled and stood and glittered in her eyes, but did not spill. Welled and glittered, like ice crystals, only just beginning to form.  
  
"Oh, Margot," Clarice whispered, and her voice sounded like dead leaves rattling faintly, stirred into a last dance, perhaps, by a frigid winter breeze. "Be my friend, then, if you want to, and thank you. God knows, I'll need one now. But it does make things worse. Far worse. He asked you to be my friend, fine, but it's what he forgot that frightens me."   
  
"What did he forget?"  
  
"He'll be alone, even more alone now, really, then he ever was before. It wasn't just me taking the risks when we decided to try make our lives together. I wasn't the only one who traded safety for hope. He asked you to be my friend, Margot. But who'll be HIS friend?"   
  
There was no reassuring answer to this question, there was only the obvious answer. Starling turned back to her window, and her view of the city, sad and faded-looking in the grey, watery light.  
  
He's killed her, Margot thought unhappily, and he's probably killed himself too. Judy and I should have done more, we should have tried harder to stop him.  
  
She put this line of thought aside, although it was an oddly tempting one. Ultimately, though, it was pointless. She hoped Starling was privately shedding those standing tears that had been in her eyes now, while her face was turned away and she had a semblance of privacy.   
  
Margot hoped she would let those tears spill while she still could, before it would be too late. Before they could freeze solid in her eyes and in her heart, and never be spilled again.   
  
******************************************  
  



	15. Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Fifteen  
  
October 19, 2:30 AM, Summerlin:  
  
Clarice Starling had just awakened from a thin, unrestful doze, and the dream that had roused her, so vivid only moments before, was now disintegrating into illogical, cryptic fragments, as dreams do upon exposure to the waking world.   
  
She looked; eyes still half bleared shut, at the faintly glowing green read-out of the clock radio at her bedside, and saw that it was only two-thirty, not a good time to be awake and alone.   
  
In the darkness of her room, her newly roused consciousness hovered between the increasingly solid impressions of the real room around her, and the swiftly melting images and sensations of her dream.   
  
She saw a pale stream of dim moonlight pouring through her bedroom window, as well as the phantom of a dark head, bent to her breast. The clammy touch of her own sweat cooled her skin, even as the illusory touch of warm hands and lips heated it. She felt the constrictive embrace of her tangled bedclothes, along with the ghostly and far more welcome embrace of her recent dream companion. She felt an untenanted void at her center and at the same time she felt a diminishing, much-loved presence filling her wherever she was empty. She saw a candle-lit terrace in Buenos Aires, an alfresco supper laid for two, and she saw a darkened, solitary room in a suburb of Las Vegas.   
  
She shut her eyes tightly and hugged herself as she squeezed her legs together, trying to keep the images of her dream in sight as long as she could, attempting to stay on the terrace just a little longer, attempting to keep his fading image with her, beside her, inside her, just a few moments more.  
  
She was lying in the narrow bed in the attic room that Dr. Lecter had occupied during his own brief stay at the Verger residence. Like him, she had not wished to encounter any of Judy and Margot's houseguests, and the out-of-the-way room at the top of the house had suited her desire for solitude.  
  
But she had not requested it for that reason.  
  
Judy Ingram had guessed the real reasons, of course. When she and Margot had first come to the house in Summerlin just before noon, Margot had wanted to stop and talk with the head of the private security detail she'd hired to keep the press at bay, and had turned Starling over to Judy. Judy had taken charge of her at once, and filled her so full of tea that she had begun to entertain the whimsical suspicion that she might be in China.   
  
There had been tea, there had been lunch, and there had been a quiet climate of unspoken sympathy, but there had been no demands on her at all. She had not spoken much over lunch, and she had not been expected to. Margot and Judy's home was full of houseguests, and surely, Starling had thought, they all must be aware that she was present. Surely they must be curious about her; they'd seen her on the news often, over the past two days. But over lunch, and throughout the afternoon, she had seen various members of Judy's large family only in passing glimpses, and not one of them had even tried to speak to her.   
  
Judy must have had some heavy-duty briefing with the fam, this morning, before I showed up, Starling thought, both amused by the idea and grateful for it.  
  
After lunch, Judy had shown her to the bedroom she had chosen for Starling's use. It had been a large, airy chamber that opened on an enclosed alcove of the great patio the home was built around. A small terra-cotta fountain gurgled pleasantly in this patio alcove, and there was an ornamental rock garden filled with a variety of interesting succulents. It was a lovely room, serene and pleasing to the both the eye and the spirit. Thought and consideration had obviously gone into its selection. Clarice had been sorry to have to turn it down.  
  
"Give me the room you gave him, Judy," Clarice had requested baldly, too tired and too heartsick to cast her hunger for some shred of contact with her absent mate into more courteous terms. "You must have hidden him away somewhere. This is nice, but it isn't what I want. What I need."  
  
"Starling . . . Clarice . . ." Judy had answered, in the same gentle, cautious tone one might use to address someone who was very ill, perhaps terminally so. "Are you sure . . . well, are you sure that's wise?"  
  
This question had struck Clarice as horribly funny, and she'd laughed, even though it hurt her mouth to do so. A hard and glassy tinkling sound.   
  
"Oh, Judy. You and Margot need to be a little more careful who you invite to your parties, I think. Haven't you been paying attention to this Gothic soap opera of ours, mine and his? Do you seriously think being wise has ever had the slightest thing to do with it? Neither one of us has made one single sensible decision since the day we met."  
  
She'd shrugged and moved through the sunny bedroom, to look through the French doors and admire the rock garden outside. Then she had turned back to Judy, who'd been keeping a polite distance behind.  
  
"I really want whatever room you gave him, Judy. That's what I want. Now how much of a hard time are you going to give me?"  
  
Judy had held her in that stern gaze of hers, so incongruous on her round, pleasant features, a look that Margot, or Dr. Lecter, for that matter, would have remembered well. Then Judy had shrugged too.  
  
"Oh, all right. Come on."  
  
The two women had climbed stairs and wound down narrow hallways and finally arrived at the isolated cubby that had served as Lecter's temporary lair on a Monday morning, only two days past. Forty-eight hours. It had seemed strange to Clarice that her entire universe could be so profoundly shifted in such a short period of time.   
  
Judy swung the door open for Clarice. She looked inside.  
  
"He spent as much time lurking out by the pool as he did in here," Judy remarked, a bit waspishly. "Maybe you want a sleeping bag and a camp stove so you can wallow in anguish out there, instead."  
  
Clarice walked inside the small space. She could sense his imprint on the surroundings immediately, as clearly as one might sense the difference between night and day, or down and up.  
  
"You think I'm being stupid, don't you, Judy?" she asked, absently. She was noticing the small television set in the room, and the punctured fabric on the arms of the easy chair nearby.  
  
"I think you both tend to take the most complicated possible route from point A to point B," Judy answered. "I think maybe if you hadn't met - one or both of you would have just . . . imploded by now. And I think you two are probably the bossiest guests Margot and I have ever had."  
  
Starling had laughed and, for the second time in their brief acquaintance, had impulsively hugged Judy Ingram.  
  
"Gotta re-think that guest list, Judy, like I told you. Thank you for this. And thank you for putting up with us. I think I'd like to try to get some rest now, if that's okay? Think I'll pass on the sleeping bag, though."  
  
"Progress," Judy commented, smiling. She turned to the door of the little room and stepped through it, then paused for a moment just outside. "Just for the record, I don't really think you're being stupid, Clarice. But I will let you know when I do."  
  
Clarice nodded, almost formally, as she might to a worthy opponent after a tough shooting competition. "I'm beginning to expect nothing less. I understand you already told Dr. Lecter that HE was an idiot."  
  
Judy laughed. "Not in so many words. But I think he got the message anyway. I've never been so scared in my life."  
  
"Gave you the voodoo look, didn't he?" Clarice asked, and then cocked her head at a predatory, questing angle, became totally immobile, and stared into Judy's eyes unblinkingly.  
  
"Yes!" Judy giggled. "Just like that. Oh my God! That's perfect."  
  
"It better be. I've had that look aimed at me enough times." Her rather grim smile looked particularly disturbing on her battered face.  
  
"Yeah, I guess you have," Judy said, shaking her head. "Amazing, the things people can get used to. Well, there's a shower through here, and I left a robe and some pajamas in there for you too. We're serving dinner to the ravening hordes about sixish, but you come on down and have a bite later, if you'd like. I'll leave you alone now."  
  
She'd turned away and left, and Clarice, suddenly feeling an intense craving to be completely alone here in the space that Dr. Lecter had recently occupied, closed the door after her.  
  
For Clarice, the afternoon and evening had gone by at a glacial pace, as though time was passing only through slow erosion, not in increments of hours and minutes, but in ages and eons. The elastic nature of time was a topic she and Dr. Lecter discussed often, it being a central, almost talismanic issue in their alliance. She wondered if he was now perceiving, as she did, how time could not only move forward and back, but could, on occasion, stand still altogether.  
  
Around six, she had been able to watch herself being wheeled out of the hospital on the evening news. Another odd twist in the fabric of time, that she could be in both places, both times, at once. That she could be both on the pavement outside Sunrise Medical Center in the late morning, and also watching herself in an attic room at early evening. It was a queer, doubling sensation, and Starling had found herself looking down at her hands in her lap, to make sure that they were there, to make sure that she was real.  
  
She thought she looked small and shrunken as she watched herself crouching in her wheelchair, and was both dismayed and satisfied to see how really terrible her face looked on camera. She set aside any lingering worry that someone who had seen her at the christening party would recognize her. She hardly recognized herself.  
  
Around eight, she'd crept down to the kitchen for something to eat, more because she didn't want Judy or Margot to trouble themselves bringing her something than because she was hungry.   
  
At nine she'd drawn herself a bath, and by nine-thirty, she had forgotten that she had done so, and had stared at the small black and white television in her room, unseeing, as her forgotten bath water cooled, unused.  
  
At ten, she had decided to go to bed and try to get some sleep.  
  
The bed was narrow and confining, and had not been changed since the previous occupant had briefly used it. Clarice could detect the faintest traces of the scent of Dr. Lecter's skin once she was wrapped in the linens and bedclothes that he had used before her. Only a phantom nuance of him remained, not of colognes or soaps or other artificial fragrances, but of his natural, innate scent, and perhaps she could sense it only because she was so deeply attuned to it. Her incessant hunger for him was both sated and intensified by this tenuous and most physically evocative form of displaced contact.   
  
Fragrance of some indefinable ancient spice; astringent perfume of cedar, sandalwood, pine; vague, wild musk of fur and hide; brazen notes of copper and iron; dark and sweet of mountain plum and rambling berry; ozone-rich scent of liquid night and imminent lightning, just before an electrical storm. Forest and trees, leaves and rain, shadowy spaces and open air, new and old, red, black, purple, silver, stark bone-white.  
  
The air I breathe, she'd said to herself silently, her last fully coherent thought before she had sunk into her uneasy slumber, and from there into the erotic dream that had lain waiting just beyond sleep, composed of equal parts memory and scent.   
  
This is the air I breathe.   
  
Her last thought before drifting off, and her first, upon awakening. In her dream, she had been coming, coming so hard, and the dark, glassy waves of imagined ecstasy had galvanized her real body, lying removed in her narrow bed, and the maddened bucking of her hips and the muffled cries of joy in her throat had awakened her.  
  
This is the air I breathe.  
  
Clarice lay in her borrowed bed and slowly relaxed the taut muscles of her body, and, in time, opened her eyes and looked into the darkness above her and all around her. She looked into the darkness, and she saw.  
  
Clarice Starling made a single, inalterable decision in that odd moment, somewhere between dream and reality, her first since she had read Dr. Lecter's letter in her hospital room, since she had crushed that devastating message in her trembling hands.   
  
From that strange hybrid moment in the iron dark, she at last began to think, to consider, and to plan.  
  
  
October 19, 5:30 AM, Carnival Cruiseship "Irene Adler II", at sea, five degrees south of the equator   
  
Hannibal Lecter stood at the rail of the deserted observation deck of his hastily chosen mystery ship, gazing into the lightening night sky to the west, where the sun was coming up.   
  
He had been asleep in his narrow, solitary bunk in his woefully non-luxurious closet of a stateroom. Hasty travel arrangements often resulted in inconvenient accommodations. He disliked cramped spaces, and probably always would.   
  
Upon awakening suddenly in the tiny cabin, he had immediately resolved to get up and leave the suffocating, enclosed chamber, and had been drawn to this limitless vista of the open sea as soon as he'd come on deck.  
  
He'd been awakened by a particularly vivid erotic dream.  
  
Shredding phantoms of that dream still played, wraith-like, in his mind, and he breathed in the overwhelming scent of the sea, that great salt-cauldron of fecundity from which all life on earth had originally sprung. It was a primal, ineffably female scent, and it meshed seamlessly with the attenuated fragments of scent and fragrance from his dream.  
  
He saw the red-gold glow of dawn begin to gild the far edges of the waves at the horizon, and he tasted hints of sea spray, and he gripped the wet rail in his empty hands. He breathed in the vast scent of the eternal marine womb, filled his lungs with it, filled them again, tried to fill the newly empty places in his heart with it too.  
  
A thought came to him as he breathed, repeating in his mind, insistent and clanging, but he was not at all certain that it was a thought that had originated with him.   
  
This is the air I breathe.   
  
For the first time since he had left Clarice Starling's bedside at the Sunrise Medical Center in Las Vegas, three days before, he began to question the wisdom of the choice he had made.   
  
From that strange hybrid moment in the midst of the illimitable ocean, halfway between a fading dream and the rising sun, he at last began to doubt, to reconsider, and to regret.  
  
  
October 19, Summerlin, 8:00 AM  
  
On Thursday morning, an unexpected visitor for Clarice showed up at the temporary checkpoint Margot Verger's hired security people had set up at the edge of the property. All would-be visitors were obliged to show ID, declare intent, and await clearance from the house before being allowed to drive up to the front door, on Margot's orders, and this policy had kept the press safely outside the perimeter, at least for one day.   
  
Clarice's visitor spoke a simple message to one of the security guards to relay to the household, something that could be repeated easily and quickly, and that left no room for equivocation. The guard called in to the house, and repeated the message word for word.  
  
"I'm Ardelia Mapp, and I've come to see Clarice Starling. Tell her I've brought her a surprise."   
  
***************************************


	16. Chapter Sixteen

  
Chapter Sixteen  
  
October 19, Wednesday, Summerlin, 8:30 AM  
  
Clarice Starling's first thought, as she gazed at Ardelia Mapp, was that her former roommate looked older. She looked as though she had perhaps aged more in the single year that had passed since the two of them had been face to face than was normal, or right, in any sane version of the world.  
  
Starling's second thought was that she knew exactly who was responsible for the angular, drawn lineaments of Ardelia's half-smile. She saw the faint new lines around Ardelia's mouth, the subtle hollows under her eyes, the shadow that had fallen on her closest woman friend's familiar and once-loved face. Starling saw all these things and more. She saw very well.   
  
I did this, she thought. I'm the one who gave her twenty years worth of nightmares telescoped into one.  
  
The two women were alone, in Margot Verger's study, the pleasant and peaceful room that had been the scene of Dr. Everett Doemling's last, fatal interview. Starling had not needed to tell either Judy or Margot she needed a little privacy for this new interview.  
  
Clarice looked at Ardelia, and Ardelia looked back. They were so still in this moment, they might have been a pair of stone bookends.  
  
"Hey, Ardelia," Clarice finally said, trying her best to smile. "Long time no see."  
  
"Oh, Starling. Oh, Clarice. Look at you. What's become of you?"  
  
Starling's awkward smile faded and she raised a hand to her cheek involuntarily. She felt herself flushing. For the first time since she'd awakened to a contrived crime scene in a high-priced hotel room, she felt self-conscious about her injured face.  
  
"Turns out Las Vegas is kind of a rough town, I guess," Clarice said, knowing how wholly inadequate a remark it was, how stupid and flip, how ultimately dishonest. Somewhere in the course of the past year, she'd lost the easy knack of talking with Ardelia. She found she no longer knew how to speak truthfully to her friend.  
  
Angry tears sprang to Ardelia's eyes and her posture stiffened with hurt. She took a step closer to Starling and stared into her face. Clarice saw that she wasn't missing anything. Not a bite, not a bruise, not a mark.  
  
"I thought I'd never see you again. I thought you were dead," Ardelia said. Smothered tears and a year's worth of helpless dread roughened her voice.   
  
"I saw you in the ground, Starling, over and over again, nights when I couldn't sleep. Lots of nights. And then day before yesterday, there you are, big as life, passing out in some parking structure in Vegas on the evening news! So you need to come up with something a little better than that to say to me, after all this time, girlfriend. You need to try again!"  
  
How right she is, Clarice thought miserably. I do need to try again. I guess I owe her a little effort.  
  
She reached down inside herself, rummaging through her own disarrayed soul for some appropriate words, and came up, surprisingly, with the truth. One truth, anyway.  
  
Two stumbling steps brought her close enough to Ardelia to grasp both of her friend's hands in her own.   
  
"But I'm not dead. Ardelia. I'm not dead. I'm right here. I may look like hell, but I'm right here. And Jesus God . . . how much I've missed you," her voice cracked as she felt her own eyes fill, and she was intensely grateful to discover that there could still be room in her heart for such love and such regret.   
  
She tightened her grip on Ardelia's hands. "I've missed you so much, Ardelia. So much. You can't believe how glad I am to see you."  
  
Ardelia looked down at her hands in Starling's and the tears spilled out of her eyes and down her cheeks. But when she looked up, she was grinning, wet cheeks and all. She took her hands out of Starling's grip and pulled her into a fierce hug.  
  
"Okay. Okay, Starling, that's better. I guess maybe I can let you off the hook with that..."  
  
Clarice grinned herself, relieved. She hugged back.  
  
"Whew! So that's okay, then. Still the brass-plated toughie, aren't you, Drill Sergeant Mapp?"  
  
"You don't know the half of it, Missy May. I've got a few questions for you, once we get done bawling and hugging and all this other sentimental bull. We need to have a talk."  
  
Clarice sighed and gave Ardelia one final affectionate squeeze. Then she moved away to a chair and sat down heavily. After a pause, Ardelia followed suit and took a seat of her own. Though they did not know it, they faced each other across the same space that had separated Margot Verger and Dr. Doemling only two days earlier.  
  
"You know, Ardelia, a talk would be nice." Clarice said, and laughed, a little. "Been a while since I had a good gab with a girlfriend. So . . . questions, huh? Yeah, I guess you must have some. But I'm afraid I've got to ask you a question, before we get started. And you're not gonna like it, either."  
  
Ardelia fixed her with a level gaze.  
  
"I'm a big girl, Starling. Shoot," she said. "From the hip. You always do."  
  
"Okay. If we're gonna talk, I need to know it's just us talking, Ardelia. Just you and me. Not you, me, and the Bureau."  
  
Ardelia's lips thinned as she considered Starling's question.  
  
"A year ago, you wouldn't have asked me that," she observed, coldly.  
  
Starling shrugged. "Things change. I can't help that. I'm sorry."  
  
"Yeah, well . . ." Ardelia answered, and reached inside her purse. She brought out an opened envelope, nondescript airmail stationery, available in any variety store in the world, common as dirt. Clarice recognized her own handwriting on the address lines.   
  
"Remember this note, Clarice? You should, because you wrote it. I got it in the mail just last month. 'I'm fine and more than fine' it says, among other things. Fairly incriminating things. Do you still want to ask me if I'm here fishing for the Bureau?"  
  
Clarice smiled sadly. "I asked you to burn that, Ardelia. A year ago, you'd have done what I asked."  
  
"Let's not dance around, okay? Let me ask you, now. Is it just us talking here, or is it you, me, and_ him_?"  
  
Clarice looked out the French doors of the study, out at the overcast morning beyond. Damn. Another dreary, drizzly day in Las Vegas. Would the rain never end?   
  
Clarice asked herself if there was any part of her left that was still truly separate from Hannibal Lecter. Was it just Clarice and Ardelia talking together on this Wednesday morning? Or was that no longer possible?  
  
There weren't any clear answers in the wet, grey light streaming in through the windows.  
  
"Did you keep the ring I sent you, Ardelia?" Clarice asked inconsequently. "I was afraid you might throw it away."  
  
"I almost did," Ardelia answered, and reached inside her blouse. She drew a fine silver chain past her collar and held her closed hand out toward Starling. When she opened her hand, a platinum ring set with emeralds gleamed on her open palm.  
  
"Nice," Ardelia added. There was a hard, biting edge of recrimination in her voice. "You couldn't have afforded rocks like these on your old salary. I guess he can offer a girl a few solid fringe benefits, anyway."  
  
A split second later, Starling was surprised to find herself standing, almost nose to nose with her friend. She didn't remember Ardelia rising, she didn't remember leaping to her own feet, and she couldn't remember when she had ever been so angry with Ardelia Mapp.  
  
"Now you know it's just us here, Ardelia," she rapped out. "If it really was you, me and him, you'd be dead. He doesn't let_ anyone _call me a whore. Not even a close friend."  
  
"Oh, isn't that SWEET," Ardelia countered, hissing, a year of pain and fear and loss lending venom to her words. "Your rabid human attack dog will kill to defend your honor, is that the way it is? Of course, he'd do it anyway, since killing is what he is, since killing is_ all_ he is! But - hey - you don't want to talk about that, right? It's the thought that counts!"  
  
"You ought to shut your flapping, sanctimonious jaw, Ardelia. You don't know what you're talking about. You don't know the first thing about Hannibal Lecter and you never have."  
  
"WHY, goddamnit? Why? What in the name of God happened to you? What in hell did he do to you, to twist you around like this? Has he got you so blind you don't see what - "  
  
"He didn't do anything to - "  
  
"You've gone so completely crazy you've destroyed your entire life to go running off with that toxic fucking psycho from hell and you try to tell me that he hasn't done anything to-"  
  
"The only thing he EVER did to me was love - "  
  
"NO! NO! NO! Don't you say that to me!" Ardelia screamed, and her face twisted. Her warm brown skin had gone a sick ashy grey.   
  
"Don't you EVER say that to me! Don't you stand there with your poor face looking like a pound of ground round and tell me that evil sonofabitch LOVES you! DON'T YOU TELL ME THAT, CLARICE!  
  
Ardelia choked out a single, hoarse, infuriated sob and turned her back on Clarice. Clarice could see that her friend was shaking, her narrow shoulders hunched inward.  
  
Oh, nice work, Starling, she said to herself. You're handling this beautifully. Maybe later you can shoot her.  
  
"Ardelia . . . Ardelia." Clarice said, quietly. She hesitantly reached out to touch Ardelia's shoulder and was dismayed when Ardelia jerked away from the touch. "Listen to me. If you don't want me to tell you the truth, then what CAN I tell you? Is there some other reason you'd like better?"  
  
"Look at you, Clarice, " Ardelia said, still unwilling to turn back toward Starling. "Look what he's done to you. Don't you know what they're saying he did to you, on the news?"  
  
"Of course I know what they're saying, Ardelia. Exactly what we expected them to say, word for word. I told him to do this. I told him HOW to do it, for Christ's sake."  
  
Mapp turned around to stare at her friend.  
  
"Why? Why would you put yourself in a world of hurt like this? How could you agree to something so sick?"  
  
"They had us trapped in that fucking hotel, Mapp. No way we could have gotten out together, and no way he'd have made it into custody alive, either. They'd have blown his damn head off for resisting arrest even if he'd put on the handcuffs himself and baked 'em a cake in the bargain. You know what I'm talking about, Ardelia, you've seen it happen."  
  
"So, let me see if I've got this straight. You guys figured out that if he beat you to a bloody pulp and busted up your face and . . . and raped you and left you for the cops it would be a good idea?"  
  
"He made me look like a victim so I wouldn't be arrested myself. Jeez, Ardelia, you never used to be so slow. He did it so I could blame everything on him and get away clean. And I agreed because I had to. If he'd thought for one moment that I was in danger of being charged, he never would have left me."  
  
"And he's loyal too! What a guy! Maybe he could have massacred a few cops for you, too, like he did in Memphis."  
  
"We had three choices. Get arrested, get killed, or get our butts in gear and do whatever it took to get out alive. We chose whatever. I chose. And I chose right. It worked. I can't help it if you've got a problem with that. Is it the fucking that bothers you the most about this? Or is it that we got away with it?"  
  
"I've got so many problems with all of this fucked up craziness I don't even know where to begin. Tell me this. Where's your black knight now? Isn't he around to chew my face off or whatever for speaking harshly to his princess? He's so goddamned committed to you, why don't I see him here?"  
  
Had Ardelia stabbed Clarice through the chest, she could not have pierced her heart more accurately. The emotional impact was so acute, Clarice actually experienced physical pain and staggered back a step or two, as though Ardelia had struck her. All the hot energy in her seemed to drain away like water flowing out of a vessel.  
  
"But you wouldn't see him, Ardelia," Clarice remarked, almost absently, almost more to herself than to her friend. She turned back to her chair and sank into it, suddenly limp. "You'd never have seen him coming. No one ever does."  
  
Ardelia flung herself into her own chair with a discouraged sigh. She stared at Starling for a long time, and some strange species of terrible pity hardened her expression, drew her skin too tight over the bones of her face.  
  
"You sure didn't see him coming, did you, honey?" her tone was both kind and harsh, softened with grief and cold with judgment.  
  
Clarice made one final effort to explain that which she herself could not really understand. What neither she nor Dr. Lecter had ever been able to explain or quantify, and had been obliged, finally, to learn to simply accept. The central mystery in their intertwined lives, as inexplicable and miraculous and frightening as raising the dead or walking on water.   
  
It came to Clarice, as she gathered her thoughts, that she would never have made this doomed attempt to explain the ineffable to anyone less precious to her than Ardelia Mapp had once been.  
  
"Neither of us could have foreseen any of it," she said to her friend. "Neither of us saw it coming. We know how crazy it is - don't you realize that? We're the ones who wasted almost ten years on games and smokescreens and obstinate denial. Ten years we can never get back again, gone. And how many years more would you give us, Ardelia? Care to lay some odds?"  
  
She pinned Ardelia with an uncompromising gaze and went on.  
  
"Love isn't brains, it isn't rational thought, it isn't a goal you can seek or a plan you can make or a calamity you can avoid. It moves through your life like a wind. It just happens. It's just the way it is. We didn't ask for it. People don't ask for lightning to strike either, but sometimes it does."   
  
"Sometimes bad things happen to good people?" Ardelia asked caustically.  
  
"And sometimes good things happen to bad people," Clarice answered. "Tell you the truth, I like to think that somehow... it all evens out."  
  
"I've read the files, Clarice, same as you. Hannibal Lecter is a vicious, murdering, evil man. He's terror personified and he's not fit to walk the same earth as the rest of us. That's what I know about it, even if you don't. Can you even that out?"  
  
Ardelia shook her head vigorously, as though trying to clear it of some repellent psychic substance. She obviously didn't expect any answer to her question.  
  
"Fucking Jack Crawford," she observed bitterly. "I hope he's screaming in hell for what he did to you."   
  
Clarice let out a brittle caw of laughter. She saw Ardelia's eyes narrow with surprise.  
  
"There ya go, Ardelia. Loyal to end. Crawford did it to me. Lecter did it to me. The Bureau did it to me. Anyone and everyone is to blame, everyone except pure-of-heart little me, is that how you have it figured? But it's so hard to believe anything else, right? I guess I'm the first woman in the history of the world who ever fell in love with an evil man. Saint C of the Bureau falls from grace. "  
  
"Ladies who fall for the bad guy don't come out well in the end, Starling. Eva Braun died young. And even if you're not a saint, you sure as hell aren't in the same league as Lecter."  
  
"You know, girlfriend, I really don't want to go round and round with this any more. I'm tired of it. I've been there, done that, more than you know. And what it all boils down to is I don't care. I made my choice. I'm living with it. And you know what? I'm not obligated to defend my choices to you."  
  
"Okay. Okay. But where is he, then? The love of your life? Why isn't he here with you now, when you need him?"  
  
Starling laughed again, icy, tearing laughter that was horrible to hear.  
  
"He's not here because, strange as it sounds, he thinks just like you, Ardelia. I hate to tell you this, since I know you won't want to hear it, but you guys are in agreement. He doesn't think he's good for me either. "  
  
Ardelia blinked, surprised. "So. . .what? You're saying he-"  
  
"He cut me loose. That's what I'm saying. First he fixed it so I'd never ever have to tell anyone the truth about us, and then he fixed it so I could never get back to him without putting his neck in a noose, and then he vanished. He's good at that, not leaving loose ends, all the i's dotted and all the t's crossed. You two are alike in that, too, Ardelia."   
  
"I am_ nothing _like that grotesque freak of yours, and I'm sorry I called you a whore, okay? Can we call it a draw on the name-calling contest? Why would he do something like that?"  
  
"So I wouldn't have to play dead anymore. So I could get back to my own life. So that I could do or have anything in the world my heart might desire, except the only thing I really want. You ought to throw him a party, Ardelia. He did the 'decent' thing, the only truly selfless thing he's probably ever done in his whole adult life."  
  
Starling's own primary pain, never far away, ground and twisted in the new wounds in her heart and she found she was suddenly weary of this fruitless conversation with Ardelia Mapp. This friendship, years old and once so important to her, was probably impossible to salvage, and that was a loss. But she had more intolerable losses to attempt to withstand now, and she honestly didn't know how, or if, she could.   
  
She added a bitter footnote to all she'd said before. "And you can believe me when I say - I sure never saw THAT coming."  
  
"But . . . but that's the best news I've heard in a year, if it's really true. He just let you go? No strings? That's a good thing."  
  
"No, it is not a good thing, Ardelia. I don't expect you to understand. It's wrong and it's stupid and it'll probably kill us both, in time," she sighed desolately and went on. "We both had to pay enormous prices and fight a thousand different demons and turn ourselves inside out just to steal a few short months of happiness and now . . . after everything we've been through . . . he's left us with_ nothing_."   
  
She stopped to pass a shaking hand over eyes that had started to burn.  
  
"I could just kill him for it," she said thickly, and her voice broke.  
  
Ardelia smiled humorlessly in response, a merciless, ugly little grin that Clarice would not ever have dreamed she'd one day see disfiguring her friend's face.  
  
"Good deal. I'll help you do it."  
  
Clarice looked at Ardelia, and looked into her own memory, remembering so much, how they'd shared so many of the same hopes as young women at Quantico. She saw what a staunch ally Ardelia had been to her, and what an implacable enemy she now was to Hannibal Lecter. It was such a tragic irony that the two people in all the world she most loved must be so irrevocably estranged.  
  
"Oh, Ardelia," she argued, knowing it was pointless. "He doesn't hate_ you_. . ."  
  
The two women were silent for a time, having reached an impasse that neither could find a way around. The desultory pattering of the rain outside filled the silence between them, and it seemed to Clarice that perhaps an ancient and dismal message about the way of the world could be discerned in the sound. Everything flows away. Nothing stays the same. The center doesn't hold.  
  
Yeats on entropy. Not exactly encouraging.  
  
I am so very tired, she thought. I've just about had it.  
  
"What will you do now?" Ardelia asked, breaking into Starling's wretched reverie.  
  
"I really don't know for sure," Clarice admitted. "I don't have a lot of options left."  
  
Ardelia shook her head with a small exasperated snort of laughter. "You know what your problem is, Starling?"  
  
Clarice snorted too, genuinely amused. "No fucking idea. Are you going to enlighten me, Dr. Mapp?"  
  
Ardelia ignored the sarcastic jibe and went on. "You've got the whole world divided into two poles. The Bureau versus Lecter. You've been oscillating between them for a decade. First one, then the other, either-or, nothing in between. You suffer from an acute case of tunnel vision."  
  
"That's strange. That's pretty much what he thinks too."  
  
"Gosh, I'm supported by a professional opinion. I'm just so pleased I could spit. C'mon, let's get out of this dreary little room. I want to show you something outside."  
  
"Is it my surprise? You said you'd brought me a surprise. "  
  
"Yep. I did," Ardelia stood up and grinned at Starling. "Not that you've been a good girl and actually deserve a surprise or anything . . . but, you can think of it as a learning aid."  
  
Clarice rose too. "Oh, that's nice. Patronize me some more, please, Ardelia? It makes me feel like I'm right at home."  
  
They moved toward the door of the study, and stepped out into the hall beyond.  
  
"Ah, what a cutting remark. You've been sharpening your smart-ass skills, Starling," Ardelia commented as they walked down the corridor. "Been practicing, I guess. They say every time Lecter opens his mouth, razor blades fall out."  
  
Clarice was struck by the fantastic and not wholly inaccurate image, and laughed in spite of her sense of loyalty. The two of them moved towards the foyer that led to the front door of the house. They saw no one. Judy and Margot and those of their guests who were up must be gathered in the kitchen hunting coffee. The foyer and the great room beyond it were empty.  
  
Ardelia moved to the front door and opened it. She turned back to her friend from the threshold.  
  
"C'mon. It's right out here."  
  
Clarice felt a sudden craven reluctance to see whatever Ardelia wanted to show her. Such fearful reactions were foreign to her, and she knew of no reason to be afraid. Yet she was.  
  
"What is it?" she asked, hesitating at the threshold, unwilling, for the moment, to step past.  
  
Ardelia smiled back at her. "Animal, vegetable, or mineral? Bigger than a bread box? C'mon, C, don't be a wuss. I think you'll be pleased."   
  
She walked out the door then, leaving Clarice alone to follow if she would.  
  
A familiar voice from the past asked her a question as she hovered in the doorway.  
  
_"You're tough, aren't you, Officer Starling?"_  
  
Oh yeah. Oh yeah . . . I'm tough all right. Takes a licking and keeps on ticking, that's me. Bring it on. On and on and on.  
  
She squared her tired shoulders and went outside to see what Ardelia had brought for her.  
  
About twenty yards past the front door, out in the circular driveway, in the misty grey light of a rainy morning, Ardelia Mapp stood beside a metal ghost.  
  
A blast from the past crouched down like a beast about to spring in the driveway, sleek bodied, bristling muscle, still ready to rumble, too tough to die. Vintage Detroit rolling steel, the most beautiful, graceful and gleefully brutal of automotive designs ever, the once and future king of the highway.   
  
My speedy chariot, Clarice thought, overwhelmed with wonder and pleasure to behold this old friend that she had never thought to see again. My old beast. My career may have gone to hell, and I never got to join the good ol' boys club, but I damn sure always had the coolest ride in the whole Bureau. My Mustang._ My car!_   
  
"Oh . . . my . . . GOD," she breathed, stunned, delighted. "How did you find it?"  
  
Ardelia managed to look both smug and disapproving.   
  
"Like I told you, I can read case files just as well as you. I found it in a self-storage facility about three miles from the Chesapeake Bay. Where they found your friend and mine, Paul Krendler, by the way, floating face down with his brains scooped out."  
  
A black impulse to laugh seized Clarice Starling, as it always did when she thought of Hannibal's mad dinner party for three on the shores of the Chesapeake. She always remembered how Paul had said the blessing, and how Dr. Lecter had kept his sleek head bowed and his eyes reverently downcast throughout the unusual grace, delivered so earnestly by Paul, esteemed guest and second course. The blackest of comedies, staged just for her. That extreme feast had been both the worst and the funniest thing she had ever seen. Or done.  
  
"Marine life predation," she commented to Ardelia, only barely managing not to chuckle. "Always happens with the floaters. How'd you know to check the self-storage yard, Agent Mapp?"  
  
"I remembered your boyfriend's extra special Valentine and put two and two together. Then I just checked all the self-storage facilities near the bay until I found it. And I think we'd better tell National Geographic that the sharks are using crossbows and trepanning skulls now."  
  
Clarice walked closer to her old car, laid a hand on the hood. The paint looked a little seedy and there was a hairline crack near the top of the windshield, but Ardelia had clearly kept the car in pretty good working order all these months.  
  
"I don't think it was the sharks, Mapp. But I'd look hard at the crustaceans if I were you," she turned away from the Mustang and looked at Mapp. "This was a bitch for you to find, wasn't it? This, more than anything else, convinced you I was dead, didn't it?"  
  
"Yes. Yes, it did."  
  
"But you still kept the car. Why?"  
  
Ardelia's lips peeled back from her teeth in a pained smile.   
  
"We weren't put here to know everything, however much we'd like to, my grandma used to say. Life always has another bend in the road for us. When I saw that car, covered with dust and sitting in the dark in that ratty storage bay, I knew you were dead, see . . . but I still_ hoped_ you weren't. Understand?"  
  
"Yes, perfectly. Hope. It's really the best thing life can show us, isn't it? The only thing, really. At least we agree on that. So you found the papers and stuff in my safety deposit box, then."  
  
"Well of course. You left a little message on my answer machine, didn't you? Dear Delia, in case I'm dead, blah, blah. Your will, deed to your half of the duplex, title to the car, all that stuff you left."  
  
Clarice walked around to the driver's side of the Mustang and opened the car door. No familiar scents wafted out; it had been too long since she'd occupied this car. But the myriad scents of memory flowed from the interior in a virtual torrent. She glanced at Ardelia over the roof.  
  
"You DO know that when I left that message for you, I really pretty much thought I WOULD be dead, right?" she asked. "We are clear on that?"  
  
"Yes," Ardelia said, simply.  
  
"Good," Clarice smiled. "Drive it much?"  
  
"Hell, no. Guzzles gas like it's a double agent for OPEC, creeps up to eighty on the straight in a second. You can tell it has evil intentions, that car."  
  
Clarice laughed, a high, clear laugh, the first truly good one since she'd read a handwritten letter in an antiseptic hospital room three days prior. She patted the roof of the car fondly, as she might have patted a big, mean dog that only she could control.  
  
"And you brought it all this way," she said to Mapp. "For me. Thank you. Really, thank you, Ardelia. It's the nicest surprise I've had in a while."  
  
Ardelia moved to the passenger side of the car and opened that door. She stood there a moment, staring at Clarice across the roof.  
  
"Want to know why I brought it for you?" she asked.  
  
Clarice sighed. Everyone she loved always had some lesson they wanted her to learn. She must strike people as inordinately stupid.  
  
"Sure. Fire away."   
  
No use putting it off. Ardelia would never lighten up until she'd had her say. And Clarice wanted to get the lecture over with. She felt like she might want to go for a ride.  
  
"Once upon a time, C," Ardelia said. "You used to drive this rolling death-trap for fun, for the sheer recklessness of it, for the speed, whatever. It was yours, your thing. Mark that part - okay? Your thing. How long has it been since you did your own thing, only yours, you, Clarice Starling, separate from anyone else?"  
  
"Three days," Clarice answered without hesitation.  
  
"Wrong answer. It's like I was saying inside. You've got the whole world boiled down to a choice between an corrupt organization and a murderous aberration. But there's more to life than that. More to YOUR life. There are other roads to take, thousands of 'em."  
  
Ardelia stopped and tossed something over the roof of the car to Clarice. Starling's reflexes had always been sharp, and she caught the toss without thinking. Her hand closed around metal, and she thought she could guess what Ardelia had thrown her.  
  
A set of car keys.  
  
"Drive, Clarice," Ardelia said, eyes serious and intent. "Road trip. Just do me that one favor, okay? Before you do anything else, before you make any decisions, take a drive, hit the road, think about all the places where the road could lead you. It's all I'm asking."  
  
Clarice stared back at her friend a moment or two longer, then looked inside the car, at the driver's seat. Very slowly, her hand drifted away from her side, almost as if it moved to its own purpose, and need not refer to her will. She reached into the car and put her fingers on the steering wheel, felt the rich texture of the leather wheel cover, soft and cool, smooth yet with a slight drag under the pads of her fingers, an oddly intimate feeling, like touching a lover's skin. She gave the wheel a tentative little twist.  
  
Life was a journey, and you never really knew exactly where you were going. She'd taken in that particular life lesson in spades over the past two years. Life could be a road, and ultimately, all you could do was drive on.  
  
Not an endless road, though. One could never know where, or why, or when, but eventually every traveler must meet his or her journey's end.  
  
But not right now, Clarice said to herself with a slightly crooked grin. Not before breakfast . . . surely? She was experiencing a sudden bizarre food craving, an insistent yen she hadn't known since she'd left the United States a year before this day, and would have sworn she'd forgotten.  
  
"Hey, Mapp," she asked. "What time is it?"  
  
Ardelia blinked and checked her wristwatch. "Uh . . . about a quarter past nine . . ."  
  
"Cool!" Clarice exclaimed, and laughed, a somewhat manic laugh that made Ardelia blink again. "There's still time!"  
  
She jumped into the Mustang and reset the seat controls by touch. She put the key into the ignition.  
  
"C'mon, Mapp, get in. Road trip it is."  
  
Ardelia leaned down to look in, for a time, at Clarice. Finally she shook her head, both amused and perplexed, and got into the car.  
  
Clarice turned over the engine. The old V-8 roared aggressively as it came to life. Internal combustion. That old black magic, working just fine, after all this time. Clarice grinned hugely.  
  
"Buckle up, baby," she told her passenger. "I'm hungry. I want some breakfast, something really special, and we're gonna have to hurry. Here we go."  
  
She put the car in gear and as she pulled around in the driveway, she heard gravel crunching under her tires and felt it through the soles of her feet. Good surface under tires, the quintessential siren song of the road.  
  
"Uh-huh. Oka-aay . . ." Ardelia commented, a bit warily. "Fine. Whatever you say, Starling. Ummm, can I ask where we're going?"  
  
Clarice Starling cackled as though she'd gone mad and sprayed gravel as she stomped on the gas pedal.  
  
"You never ask, Ardelia!" she shouted through her crazed guffaws. "You never ask! It spoils the surprise!"  
  
***************************************************


	17. Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Seventeen   
  
October 19, Wednesday, Summerlin Parkway, 9:15 AM

_"I was struck by lightning, walking down the street,"_"Where the hell are they going?" Jacqueline Snead asked her companion, Terry Phips. She had to raise her voice quite a bit to be heard above the car stereo, which was blasting Oingo-Boingo at top volume.  
  
"How do I know, Jake?" Terry answered, and abruptly changed lanes to get back into the blind spot of the Roush Mustang he and his companion were tailing. "Dead Man's Party" continued to bop out of the speakers.  
  
Terry and Jake both worked for the National Tattler. He was a  
photographer, videographer and documentary filmmaker who also held a Masters in anthropology from Columbia University. It had been his burning ambition to discover and document in film some previously unknown aboriginal tribe or exotic culture from his early teens onward. He had, however, fallen somewhat short of his aspirations in life when financial considerations had behooved him to accept employment as a camera jockey for a supermarket tabloid, several years back.   
  
Not that there weren't certain points of anthropological interest in the field work he now did for the Tattler. Just now, for instance, he was engaged in a study that included such interesting aspects as cannibalism, human sacrifice, and even taboo-transgressive sexual practices. It paid the bills too, and supported his various film projects. There were always compensations. Let his former classmates from Columbia sneer if they would.  
  
"That 'Stang is a fast car," he said to Jake. "I do know that. She's already riding that gas pedal, and if she sees us, she can leave us eating her dust in 30 seconds flat. Those Roush modifications were meant for racing. And Starling never has liked us good folks at the Tattler much."  
  
Jake grinned like a copperhead. "Yeah, the ungrateful bitch! The Tattler made her a star and now she doesn't even want to talk to us! The nerve of some people, getting free publicity and then trying to keep all the really juicy stuff to themselves! Besides, look at her! She drives like a goddamned maniac!"  
  
Terry Phips, who had worked with Jake for six months now, knew full well that she was only half joking.   
  
Jacqueline Snead, called "Jake" for short, and often "Jake the Snake" by those who knew her best, had never wanted to do anything BUT uncover, record, and report on the most scandalous vagaries of her fellow humans, preferably to as large an audience as possible.   
  
Since earliest childhood, Jake had been Jake. As a little girl, she'd alienated her brothers and sisters (as well as all the other little kids in the neighborhood) by consistently telling on them, had graduated to Class Informer by high school, and had discovered journalism, the perfect vehicle for her intense desire to dig out and disseminate confidential information, in college. Working as a video correspondent for the Tattler's syndicated "infotainment" television show, "Tattler Confidential", was her dream job. She'd never wanted to do anything else. Her sustenance was scandal, her anathema was privacy, and her one great passion was dirt.  
  
And her current assignment, shadowing the newly resurfaced Clarice Starling, promised to yield fabulous dirt of the rare earth variety, if only Jake could get an interview on tape.   
  
Clarice M. Starling, darling of the tabloids! Former FBI agent, former bad-ass terminatrix of assorted druggies, criminals and scumbags, and now, it seemed, former captive sex-toy of Hannibal "the Cannibal" Lecter. Lecter, of all people, who just happened to be THE most lucrative, circulation-boosting media monster in Tattler history.   
  
Jake LOVED Hannibal Lecter. Everyone at the Tattler loved him. They'd have celebrated his birthday every year if anyone had ever been able to discover conclusively what the actual date was. Among Tattler staffers, he'd indirectly helped to finance down payments on mortgages, college tuitions, the keeping of mistresses, orthodontia, Caribbean vacations, purchases of autos, nose jobs, anniversary gifts, bar mitzvahs, coke habits, weddings, stock purchases, and God knew what else. That he'd also been indirectly instrumental in the murder of one of their own, the late Freddy Lounds, was largely forgotten. Memories were short at the Tattler.  
  
Oceans of ink had been spilled in his name; entire forests had been denuded to provide the newsprint on which his story had been told and sold. Sidebars, serials and bylines by the score had hatched out of his gruesome exploits like rich broods of baby spiders. As serial killers went, he was Ali, Godzilla, and Santa-fucking-Claus all rolled up into one.   
  
And Clarice Starling, by all accounts, had actually been up close and personal with the guy for a year! And lived!  
  
Jake the Snake was morally certain that she could gladly have given her right boob and half her teeth to talk to Starling. The so-called "legitimate press" had concentrated on the expected aspects of the story so far, rehashing Lecter's murderous credits ad nauseam and going on and on about the deaths of the two Texans out on I-10. Then there was the ominous disappearance of whistle-blower Doemling, a new angle that had leaked out of some unknown source in the Bureau and broken in the news only yesterday . They'd followed the progress of the ongoing manhunt in detail too, and had also begun to ask some very tough questions about the FBI's role in the failed arrest as well as about what could be construed as its somewhat careless attitude toward former agent Starling. She'd been made into something of a public martyr already, owing to the hideous abuses she had no doubt undergone while in Lecter's keeping. Abuses which had been left tastefully unexplored by the major news agencies so far. It was a sort of tacit understanding: some details were simply too heinous to be pursued without making the pursuers look hopelessly tacky.  
  
The "legitimate press" were a bunch of prissy-ass dimwits, as far as Jake the Snake was concerned. It was perfectly fine to look tacky, in her opinion, if that's what it took to get the story. Blah, blah, yadda yadda, rape was a crime of aggression, not a crime of passion, ain't it awful, aren't we PC? All of that stuff was so totally beside the point it wasn't even funny. Where was the real goods in any of it? Where was the nitty-gritty dish that millions would unlimber their wallets to consume? Where was the DIRT?   
  
He'd fucked her! Repeatedly! That was the point here! That was the real horror-show the public would be wild to take in, and there would be only one question that would catch and twist in the public mind like a rusty fish hook.  
  
What had it been like?   
  
Was he hung like King Kong? Did he ejaculate ice cubes? Did he bite when he came, and if so, where? What did he tie her up with? Did he say things to her, before, during or after? Had he made her do stuff? Had he made her EAT stuff? Necrophilia? Bestiality? Satanic rituals? Power tools? Rubber or leather? Outie or innie? Boxers or briefs? What? Where? When? How?  
  
Enquiring minds wanted to know . . .  
  
And Jake Snead wanted desperately to be the one to tell them all about it. She wanted to ask the questions no one else would. She wanted to broadcast the answers no one would admit they were dying to hear. Oh, yeah. She had to get that interview. Had to.  
  
Starling, Lecter, Will Graham, Francis Dolarhyde, Jame Gumb, Frederick Chilton, Jack Crawford, Evelda Drumgo - cops, killers, perps and vics - they all had an intricately twisted connection to each other and to the public through a single common thread - The National Tattler. It was all right there in the Tattler's morgue: a long, complex history common among them all, like the convoluted branches of some hellish family tree. It was probably due to this tangled web of connections that Starling now, like Will Graham had once done before her, absolutely refused to utter one syllable to ANY representative of the National Tattler. Period.   
  
Even though the bitch had been giving phone interviews to other, more reputable members of the press from the hospital. Jake knew this because after her fortieth call to the Sunrise Medical Center, Starling herself had come to the phone and let Jake know that she would not be granting Jake's request to tape an interview, and that she had no statement to make, now or ever. Not to the Tattler, that was. As Starling had put it, snarling into the phone at Jake like a talking meat-grinder, they'd be holding the Winter Olympics in hell before she would EVER say word one to the National-blood-sucking-Tattler.   
  
Jake hadn't been fazed. Not then. So what if Special Agent Gag Order hadn't wanted to talk? So what if she maybe hadn't appreciated that "Bride of Dracula" thing, years back, or the "Death Angel" thing last year? Fuck her if she couldn't take a joke. There were other ways. This was the Tattler's story, always had been, right down the line. It wasn't right for Starling to shut her out. It wasn't fair.  
  
Upon Starling's discharge from the hospital, Jake had gotten some good film of Margot Verger smarting off about the FBI outside the hospital. But that wasn't enough, of course, the entire press corps had gotten the same sound-bite. More follow up was needed. Jake had immediately turned prevaricator and started claiming to be with various news agencies other than the Tattler in each of her next forty or so subsequent calls to Margot Verger's residence.   
  
Unfortunately, Margot's private security people knew their business, and were monitoring the phones. They'd apparently put Jake's name on a list of undesirable callers with undesirable phone numbers, because they'd busted her some dozen times with caller ID. By the time Jake had started calling in on a variety of borrowed mobile lines, most of the security people who were working the phones had come to recognize her voice. By the time she'd given up on trying to disguise her voice and had made Terry Phips do the calling, no calls at all were being forwarded to Starling. She would only respond, if she chose, to written inquiries.  
  
It had also proven impossible for Terry and Jake to get onto the grounds of Margot Verger's residence and snag a few pix. Despite repeated attempts. Nothing worked. The caliber of private security real money could buy was awesome.   
  
Eventually, Terry and Jake had been reduced to camping out in Terry's battered puke green Chevy wagon at the side of the road nearest the Verger property, watching to see who came out, who went in, and waiting for Starling herself to appear, which had not happened. They could see the temporary guard post at the head of the long driveway, and could see the front door of the house from their vantage point too, if they peered through one of Terry's telephoto lenses. But there had been nothing to see throughout their long vigil. They'd been bivouacked there since around one thirty on Tuesday afternoon, and had watched other news vans come and go. Only Jake Snead of the Tattler had been fanatic enough not to budge for over eighteen hours.   
  
They'd passed the afternoon and evening without seeing anything, and by the morning of Wednesday the nineteenth, Jake could have informed the world, had she wished, that a station wagon crammed with camera equipment, two reporters, and a lot of puke green vinyl upholstery was no place to spend the night.  
  
Jake had begun to feel depressed on that Wednesday morning, had come to believe that she might not be able to get next to Starling after all. This growing feeling of defeat sawed on raw nerve endings so deeply embedded in Jake's psyche that she herself was largely unaware of them. It pained her in a place at the twisted and unknown roots of her vulpine, covetous being. Expose or be exposed. The law of Jake Snead's personal jungle.  
  
Then, at around 8:30, a break in the routine had come at last. A black chick driving a Mustang had turned into the driveway and stopped at the guard post. While the security guards there had relayed whatever message she had to give to the house, Jake had frantically searched through all her background notes on Starling, and had tentatively identified the woman as Ardelia Mapp, Starling's former roommate. Then the woman had been allowed to drive up to the house, and had been let in the front door.  
  
A half hour or so later, the woman Jake thought was Ardelia Mapp and Starling herself had emerged from the house. Jake had reached over to the driver's seat and shaken Terry, who was fast asleep and snoring with his mouth wide open, roughly.  
  
"Wakey, wakey, Terry," Jake had told him. "Gimme one of those long lenses of yours. We may have hit paydirt."  
  
As they watched through Terry's telephotos, the two women appeared to have some sort of discussion as they stood near the Mustang in the circular part of the drive. Terry snapped a few pictures, and Jake was horribly disgruntled not to be able to hear what the two were saying. Long distance audio surveillance equipment was not a line item in the budget for "Tattler Confidential" field units, and Jake had often told her superiors that this was a serious mistake.  
  
Then the two had gotten into the car and Starling at the wheel had spun around the circular drive and peeled out of it as though she was on her way to a high-speed chase. The car brushed by the guard post without stopping and pulled out onto the road so fast that Terry and Jake were momentarily stunned, and sat immobile for a time in their own vehicle, staring stupidly at the rapidly disappearing tail end of the Mustang.  
  
Like a bat out of hell, Jake commented to herself. Wonder what it is she's running from? Or running to?  
  
Then her paralysis broke and she bounced in her seat and banged on roof above her head in her excitement.  
  
"Get this heap moving, Terry!" she yipped like a jackal who has just spotted a fresh pile of tasty carrion over the next rise. "We've got her now! Follow that Mustang!"  
  
Terry had keyed his ignition, popped his transmission into drive,  
stalled, endured a radioactive glare from Jake the Snake that probably should have killed him, and then managed to get his old clunker on the road and after Starling. Jake smacked the controls on the car stereo as Terry accelerated, and cranked the volume once she'd found her favorite moldy-oldies station. She liked to listen to loud music when she was on the scent.   
  
It had been damned hard to keep up with their speedy quarry, but they had seen her turning into a Summerlin Parkway on-ramp in the distance, and were able to catch her up some while she was delayed in the queue of cars waiting to get on the mini-freeway. The Parkway was fairly busy at nine thirty AM, still a bit jammed with the last remnants of Wednesday morning rush hour traffic. The heavy traffic was moving, but Starling had been forced to slow down a little as she traveled west on the Parkway, which gave Terry and Jake all the opportunity they needed to creep up on her, car length by car length.  
  
They'd narrowed her lead to two or three car lengths, and had followed her for two miles in the far left lane, the fast lane.   
  
After the fourth mile, the Mustang began to move to the right, lane by lane. Jake thought Starling might be getting ready to take an exit, and had asked aloud, bouncing all the while to Oingo-Boingo's cheerful zombie stomp, where in the hell Ex-Special Agent Speed Racer might be going._"Got my best suit and my tie, shiny silver dollar on either eye,"_

"Look at that, Jake," Terry shouted above the music. "Right turn signal. I think they're gonna get off."  
  
Jake thought so too. She scanned the cityscape off the Parkway, but could see nothing that looked like a potential destination. The area was a conglomeration of strip malls, auto dealerships, fast food joints and large retail outlets like Walmart and Circuit City and such.  
  
"Where's the fire, Clarice?" Jake murmured to herself. She glanced at Terry. "Don't lose 'em, babe. I think we're getting there, wherever there is. Can you narrow the gap?"  
  
"Sure could. But what if she sees us?"  
  
"I don't think she's paying much attention to - HEY - there they go - the next exit! Spring Mountain! Get over, Terry!"  
  
Terry zoomed right, into the Spring Mountain Boulevard exit lane, cutting off a Honda Civic in the process. They took the exit four car lengths behind the Mustang as the angry Civic driver laid on his horn. Neither of them even registered the automotive protest.  
  
The Mustang ahead of them turned right off the Parkway exit onto Spring Mountain and merged into the flow of westbound traffic. Terry and Jake merged into the same flow and managed to whittle the gap between Starling's vehicle and theirs by two car lengths.   
  
They watched as Starling moved to the right lane of the well traveled boulevard, and watched as she slowed, as though she was looking for something.  
  
"What and where and where and what and what and where . . ." Jake chanted monotonously under her breath as Terry moved his Chevy into Starling's lane and gained another car-length on her._"Goin' to a party where no one's still alive,"_

They both saw Starling's right turn signal at the same time, and they both saw her turn into a wide driveway at the same time, a few moments later. They both saw where she had apparently been going with such lead-footed determination all along.  
  
They both stared at each other, flabbergasted.   
  
Then Terry Phips and Jake Snead turned into the same wide driveway, and pulled up directly behind Clarice Starling's muscular Roush Mustang, their front bumper only two or three feet away from her rear end.   
  
They had arrived.  
  
"You've GOT to be fucking kidding me!" Jake commented, shaking her head in wonder. There seemed to be nothing better to say._"I was struck by lighting, walkin' down the street,  
I was hit by something last night in my sleep,"_A few minutes earlier, Ardelia Mapp had turned to Clarice Starling as they wove through traffic on the Summerlin Parkway. Although they did not know it, their car stereo was tuned to the exact same oldies station that Jake Snead preferred.  
  
"We've got a tail, C," Ardelia remarked casually.  
  
"I see 'em. Three cars behind, one lane over. Driver and passenger, green Chevy station wagon."  
  
"Puke green," Ardelia amended. "I think they've been on us since the on-ramp."  
  
"Yep, that's right. Not Bureau, not likely, not in that old beater.  
What do you think, Ardelia?"  
  
"What else?" Ardelia sighed, disgusted. "Press. Supermarket press, too, from the looks of the car."  
  
Clarice made an odd sound, something between a sigh and a chuckle and a groan. She shrugged, a small, rather hopeless looking gesture.  
  
"This gets old," she remarked, quietly. "You know it? This gets old in a hurry."  
  
Ardelia was silent a moment, and then grinned, perhaps a touch maliciously.  
  
"Well, girl, you've got no one but yourself to blame. You just HAD to date a celebrity."  
  
Starling surprised herself by laughing aloud. Hadn't Dr. Lecter said something about the "cult of celebrity" at the christening party? A hundred or so years ago, at the party? What had he said? Something about Bruce Springsteen, hadn't it been?  
  
She grinned back at Ardelia, showing almost all of her teeth.  
  
"How'd you like a knuckle sandwich for breakfast, girlfriend?"  
  
"Get out! You and what army? Besides, I thought we had other breakfast plans."  
  
Clarice smiled, nodded in agreement, and checked her rearview mirror. The green wagon was still following.   
  
"Clarice?" Ardelia asked. "What do you want to do? You know we're never gonna shake those two sleaze-hounds in the wagon. Think we should just go back?"  
  
Clarice was staring at the road ahead, thinking, and did not immediately answer Ardelia. She was thinking about the Cult of Celebrity. She supposed she was a full-fledged member of the mass media celebrity pantheon now. She thought of an unsettling thing she had seen on television, channel surfing one sleepless night several months ago.  
  
It had been a taped rerun of an old Friar's Club roast. The honoree had been Hugh Hefner, and she'd stumbled on the program quite by accident. She would have clicked on by quickly, seeking greener viewing pastures, had she not recognized a familiar face sitting on the panel.   
  
It was Patty Hearst. Kidnapped heiress, world famous domestic terrorist hostage turned bank-robber, "Tanya" of the SLA, poster-girl for the Stockholm Syndrome. Starling had read a great many of the FBI's files on the kidnapping and subsequent capture of Patty Hearst, and various accounts of the bloody last stand of the Symbionese Liberation Army had been required reading at the Quantico Academy.   
  
Twenty years later, Hearst could be found grinning like an organ grinder's monkey on a fifth rate television program designed to "honor" the founder of Playboy magazine. Starling had watched, fascinated and somehow profoundly dismayed, as Hearst made a few slightly off-color jokes about Hef and then returned to her seat. She'd been expertly coifed, gowned, and made up, given the glamour treatment for the cameras, and although it was clear from her delivery that she would never be a charismatic movie star, she had certainly looked like one.   
  
Starling had not been able to get the image of a younger Patty Hearst out of her mind as she watched: a slim, pretty girl dressed in fatigues and black beret, brandishing a machine gun, chin lifted defiantly and eyes as glassy as beads. The past and present images, SLA soldier Patty and fin-de-siecle public personality Patty, melded in her mind's eye and created a mingled whole that was infinitely disturbing in some hard-to-define way. The Cult of Celebrity had swallowed Patty Hearst whole. And never coughed her up again, not in twenty years.  
  
Is that what's going to happen to me?   
  
Starling asked herself this question as she drove west on the Summerlin Parkway and watched her pursuers in her rear-view.  
  
Get real, Starling. It's already happening.  
  
All this used to be a hell of a lot easier when I was still dead, she thought, with a sharp twist of annoyance. Thanks a lot, Hannibal. This uninvited gift of freedom you've given me has its little drawbacks, I find. For example, now it seems I can't even make a quick breakfast-run without it being front page news.  
  
She suddenly understood, with complete clarity and for the first time, how totally she and her problematical love had managed to split themselves off from the rest of the world. Like Nero fiddling while Rome burned, they'd danced on their terrace in an all too precarious separate reality composed only of desire and sheer will. Gossamer building materials indeed.  
  
She also saw, perhaps not for the first time, but more clearly than she ever had before, how much he had shielded her, how extensive had been his efforts to keep her sheltered from the harsher realities, how_ easy _he had made it for her to come to him, and to remain with him.   
  
Purely altruistic motives on his part? Not bloody likely. She did not often entertain illusions about her beloved; to do so would have been worse than foolish, it would have been actively dangerous. It was not in his nature to make_ anything _easy for others; there was very little of that kind of gentleness in him. But it was in his nature to stack the deck in his own favor, to manipulate circumstances to suit his ends. He'd wanted her, and having won her, wanted to keep her. Therefore, he'd woven a sort of secret garden all around her, a lovely and protected environment that would tempt her not to think too much.  
  
It had been so easy, really, to enter that inviolate bubble of suspended judgment, easy to stay there too. She knew that he believed she'd made sacrifices in order to inhabit the world he'd made for her, and believed that she sometimes hungered for all she'd lost.   
  
But she knew a different truth. What sacrifices? She'd turned away from a life that only became colder and emptier with each passing year, she'd set aside questionable goals that she had already come to know were forever unreachable, she'd set down crushing burdens that had continuously broken her heart since she'd been a small child. But she hadn't made any bona fide sacrifices. She hadn't had anything of worth to give away.  
  
Hell, she hadn't even had to sustain injury to her reputation.   
"Hannibal the Cannibal" might be the very epitome of vile perversion, a being so far outside the social pale that he was scarcely regarded as human at all. But Clarice Starling was an innocent in the mass cultural mind, dead or alive. Either as a brave fallen agent or as a courageous survivor of hellish captivity, her name remained unsullied.   
  
She'd never had to answer for the choices she'd made. Even now, as she stood pinned like an insect in the revealing glare of media attention, she was still spared this particular cost of loving a terrible man. Had he doubted her willingness to pay? Had he ever wondered if, should it come to a choice, she could willingly accept the deep opprobrium that was attached to his name for herself?  
  
Had he been unable, ultimately, to truly believe?  
  
In this moment, Clarice Starling feared that it might have been so.  
  
"But I'm_ not _an innocent," she objected softly, unaware that she had spoken aloud, not knowing to whom she was objecting. "I never was."  
  
Ardelia glanced at her.   
  
"Hmm? What'd you say?"  
  
Clarice, again, did not answer immediately. She checked the rearview mirror once more, and saw that the green wagon was still on her tail. She looked to her right and saw, off the Parkway, the very destination she had set out on this drizzly morning to seek. She looked at the road ahead of her, and saw years as well as miles unfolding in the distance. She looked inward and saw a stony pier of utter rebellion rising like an outcropping of hard granite from the bedrock of her being.  
  
She flipped on her right turn signal and turned to Ardelia.  
  
"I said I want some friggin' breakfast, and that's what I'm by God gonna get if it's the last thing I do. Screw the reporters, it's a free country. Hang on, Ardie - golden arches next stop. We need to get over."  
  
Ardelia groaned as Clarice cackled like a madwoman once again. She kicked her Mustang into hyperdrive and swept across the lanes of the Summerlin Parkway to take the Spring Mountain exit._"Don't run away it's only me . . . "_

As Clarice pulled into a McDonald's drive-thru lane, five cars away from the menu signs and order box, Ardelia Mapp groaned again.  
  
"THIS was your big breakfast idea??" she complained to her friend. "Junk food?"  
  
Clarice was watching the green Chevy wagon pull into the drive-thru right behind her. She saw a woman start to scramble out of the passenger seat even before the wagon came to a full stop.  
  
"Do you have any idea how long it's been since I had an Egg McMuffin?" she asked Ardelia conversationally as she watched the woman from the Chevy dash toward her car, brandishing a tape recorder and a small microphone. The woman was a short, whippet-thin specimen with an amazing profusion of kinky, carrot-red hair.  
  
Natural, Clarice thought. Has to be. No sane woman would have the nerve to get a color like that out of a bottle.  
  
Clarice began to roll her window down. No use putting it off.  
  
"And do you have any idea how bad this trash is for your body?" Ardelia asked, grimacing at the small red-headed woman who was fairly flying toward the driver's side of the Mustang. "Not to mention Brenda Starr back there. You're not really gonna talk to her, are you?"  
  
"I'm sick to death of skulking around, Ardelia. Just plain SICK of it. I have had enough."  
  
"Enough of what, Ms. Starling?" Jake Snead broke in, having reached Clarice's side of the car. She thrust her little microphone through the car window and grabbed the car door in a death grip with her free hand. "WHAT have you had enough OF?"  
  
Clarice chuckled coldly. "I've had enough of you people sticking to me like ticks, for one thing. Get your hand off my car. Does it look like I'm gonna make a break for it to you?"  
  
She nodded at all the cars ahead of her in the drive-thru lane, blocking her path.  
  
Jake nodded briefly and took her hand off the door. The mike, however, stayed right where it was: in Starling's face.  
  
"I gotta tell you," Jake said, glancing toward the large red "McDonald's" sign that adorned the small building. "This wasn't what I expected. Why Mickey-D's?"  
  
"Why not?" Clarice answered. "I'm hungry. What's your name, babe?"  
  
"Mary Jones," Jake answered promptly. "CNN."  
  
Ardelia and Clarice both guffawed.  
  
"CNN?" Ardelia snorted. "Oh, come ON. That puke green pile of junk back there your news van,_ Mary_?"  
  
"You're Ardelia Mapp, aren't you?" Jake countered without missing a beat.  
  
"Nope, I'm Diana Ross," Ardelia answered. "And my bud driving the 'Stang here is Julia Roberts. We're on a top-secret corporate espionage mission for Jack in the Box."  
  
"Watch your arm there, whatever-your-name is," Starling warned Jake. "Gotta move up."  
  
She very slowly inched one car-length forward as the first car in the line ahead of her pulled around to the pick-up window. Jake walked along beside the car, her arm still thrust inside the window.   
  
"Listen to me," Clarice said, staring through her car window into Jake's eyes. "Let's get this straight. You've pretty much got me cornered here. For another four cars or so at least, I might consider talking to you. What the hell, I'm in kind of a mood this morning. But I'm not gonna say a goddamned thing unless you stop lying to me about who you are."  
  
"Okay, okay," Jake agreed eagerly. "You're right. I'm sorry I lied, okay? I'm really with CBS, and my name is - "  
  
Clarice suddenly grabbed Jake's wrist, and quickly twisted the microphone out of her grasp. She began to slowly roll up her car window.  
  
"Hey!" Jake yowled, and made a fruitless grab at the mike.   
  
"Okay-fine," Clarice remarked mildly, ignoring Jake's furious flailing and continuing to roll up the window. "If you really feel you have to keep on lying, that's fine with me. Have a nice breakfast."   
  
"Give me my mike back!" Jake demanded. "I'm just doing my job, here! I'm just a reporter!"  
  
"You want to report something?" Clarice asked nastily. "Report this: two Egg McMuffins, two coffees, hash browns, and an order of pancakes!"  
  
"God DAMN it - " Jake squawked as Clarice rolled up the window another two inches.  
  
"You know, much as I hate McDonald's food," Ardelia remarked. "I do have to admit they make nice pancakes."  
  
"Going, going, gone . . . " Clarice said to Jake and rolled up the window another inch. "So you want me to get you an order too?" she added to Ardelia. "Pancakes, I mean?"  
  
"All RIGHT, ferchrissakes!" Jake snarled. "Jake Snead! My name is Jake Snead!"  
  
Starling stopped rolling up the window.  
  
"Snead? " she asked, somewhat bemused. "Jake Snead? You're not that crazy woman from the Tattler who called the hospital a zillion times, are you?"  
  
"Listen, can I get my mike back n - " Jake started to say.  
  
"National everfucking TATTLER!" Starling marveled, suddenly laughing helplessly. "Of course! Tattler. I should have known. It's fate, I'm sure it is . . ."  
  
She leaned back in her seat and just laughed and laughed as Ardelia, and even Jake, listened silently. The sound was as ugly and as disturbing as the sound of blows smacking repeatedly into flesh.  
  
Full circle, Clarice was thinking, remembering a sunstruck morning on the terrace in Buenos Aires, a morning that now seemed at least a lifetime ago. What had she called the Tattler on that lovely summer morning, when all the world's troubles had seemed so very far away? The international fugitive's social register?   
  
Tattler in the beginning and Tattler in the end. Wherever you go, there you are. Full circle.  
  
Jesus, is that all our lives really are? Just six billion individual little exercise wheels that spin endlessly, yet never really go anywhere? No purpose, no progress, just frantic, meaningless activity? Are we all just God's lab rats?  
  
And if that's the case, does it really matter who killed who or what the world thinks or what's wrong and what's right? Does it really matter what I do next?  
  
Is there anything that_ does _matter?  
  
"Look, Starling," Jake was saying. "Maybe you've had your problems with the Tattler in the past. But that's the paper. I'm not a print journalist - I work for the TV show. So you've really got no problem with ME, right? All I want is - "  
  
"The Tattler has a television show?" Clarice asked Ardelia, surprised.  
  
"Sure," Ardelia answered. "Five nights a week. Celebrity scandals, blood, guts, sleazy innuendo and plenty of T&A. Worse than "Hard Copy"."  
  
"Sounds pretty much like the paper, then," Clarice commented. She eased the Mustang another car length closer to the order box.  
  
"We aren't anything like the goddamned paper!" Jake objected angrily, walking stiffly beside the car, one arm still inside. "'Tattler Confidential' has a consistent 25 percent share! Try matching those numbers with a print rag!"  
  
"That's the name of your show? 'Tattler CONFIDENTIAL'?"  
  
"All I want is one quick interview, Clarice," Jake pleaded. "We could tape it right here. I really think it could help you get over your ordeal if you'd just talk about it and - "  
  
" - and might even boost your ratings into the forty percent range in the bargain," Ardelia finished with a deceptively pleasant smile at Jake.  
  
"Seeing as how an interview with me would constitute blood, guts, AND T&A all in one economical package," Starling finished, also smiling blandly. "I have to warn you, JAKE, I'm gonna be peeved if you start lying to me again. You don't give a flying fuck about my welfare and we both know it. " She eased her foot off her brake and let the Mustang bump ahead abruptly to emphasize her point.  
  
"The public has a right to know," Jake declared, her pale, freckled complexion beginning to redden with balked anger as she had to scramble to keep pace with the car. "Tell me this. After the first few months going at it with Lecter, did you ever get to where you actually liked it? Even a little? I mean, a lot can happen in a year . . ."  
  
Clarice stared, amazed, at the vile little woman while Ardelia instantly went grey. She clawed at her own seat belt, groping for the release button.  
  
"That_ does _it," she ground out hoarsely, through her teeth. "I'm gonna clean this blood-sucking bitch's clock . . ."  
  
She'd thrown open her car door and was halfway out of her seat before Starling's hand on her arm stilled her in mid leap.  
  
"Ardelia," she was saying, quietly. "Ardelia, look at me."  
  
Ardelia did as she was asked and saw a familiar expression in her old roommate's cat-amber eyes, a sort of shine. She had seen this expression before, only on occasion. She had seen it on firing ranges, she'd seen it in the practice ring at the academy, and once she'd seen it as Clarice had studied the case file on the Buffalo Bill murders, trying to divine the telling pattern that a helpful madman had told her could be found there. It was the wild hunting light that was the unreachable part of Clarice. The part that Ardelia hated, and even worse, feared.  
  
"This is my play," Clarice said. "Understand? Whatever you hear next, whatever you may think about it, it's my play. Are we straight?"  
  
"Clarice - " Ardelia began.  
  
"Are we straight on this, Ardelia?" Clarice interrupted.  
  
Ardelia shook Starling's restraining hand off her arm and flopped angrily back into her seat. She grabbed her open car door and slammed it back shut.  
  
"Fine," she answered. "Have it your way, Starling. Right-O. Your play. Your fucking funeral too, knowing you. Just do me a favor, okay? Before you do whatever crazy-ass thing you're planning now, could you get me my pancakes? I'm hungry." She heaved a great, gusty sigh and stiffly turned her head toward her window.  
  
Starling smiled at her friend and squeezed her shoulder, despite Ardelia's irritated attempt to shrug away from the touch.  
  
"Thanks, pal," Starling said softly, and smiled at the back of Ardelia's head one more time. Then she turned back toward Jake Snead, hanging like a small red-headed storm cloud just outside Starling's window.  
  
"My friend here would like to take your head off," Clarice remarked conversationally. "She could do it, too, trust me. Lickety-split."  
  
"Then I hope she likes lawsuits," Jake the Snake retorted, in an almost equally off-handed tone of voice.  
  
"Probably about as much as you like traction, Ms. Snead," Clarice answered, and showed Jake her teeth in a predator's humorless grin. "Now me, I'm thinking I might just give you a break, you know it? I don't like your paper, and I don't think I much like you, but there is something . . . fitting about this whole situation, in a way. So, what I'd like to know is, would you like me to give you a break? Tape your interview for you? Give you the real dirt?"  
  
Jake blinked at the use of the word "dirt". It was something of a Pavlovian response in her.   
  
"Well . . . uh . . . sure I would," she answered, a bit cautiously.  
  
"Okey dokey, then," Clarice said. "We're making progress. Can you work with a few conditions, ya think? Can you make some effort not to piss my friend off again, for one thing? And who's the guy you left in the Chevy? Your cameraman? "  
  
"Terry . . ." Jake agreed, beginning to feel provisionally encouraged. "Yeah, he's . . . he runs the tape and the audio . . . "  
  
"And you ask the questions, huh, Jake? You dig up the dirt and get the scoops, don't you? Can I call you Jake? Let me ask you a question, Jake. Do you think you can refrain from fucking with me? I'm telling you, I am not the person you want to fuck with, seriously. Think you could agree to that, too?"  
  
"I . . . I . . . don't - "  
  
"Well, we can come back to that question later, Jake. I'll ask you again after we get your interview in the can, shall I? Here's the REALLY important question, Jake, so you might want to listen up. If we tape an interview today . . . what's the name of your show, again?"  
  
"'Tattler Confidential'" Jake supplied at once, half mesmerized by the wildly improved story prospects that appeared to be materializing right before her eyes.  
  
"Yes, right, 'Tattler Confidential'. If we taped today, how soon,  
exactly, would the tape air? And before you answer, Jake, you want to make sure you're not fucking with me on this in particular. Because on this issue, I would definitely have to fuck back if you were."  
  
"Why, it'd air this Friday, I guess, earliest," Jake answered, obviously a bit surprised by Starling's quiet vehemence. "We broadcast out of L.A. and I'd need to get the tape into the studio for editing and we'd need some time for the promos and . . . and look, if you wanted it to air sooner, maybe I could - "  
  
"Well, Friday might be okay. You're sure you couldn't push it up any? Say, by tomorrow night? Tell me the truth now, Jake." She pushed her face very close to the window and transfixed the reporter in the same accusing stare she'd once used while interrogating suspects.  
  
Jake squirmed in that gaze. She was SO close. But she thought she'd better not lie. Not at this delicate stage of the negotiations.  
  
"Jesus, Starling, we're not magicians. Friday really is it, that's the earliest we could make it. What are you in such a damned hurry about, anyway?"  
  
"Hurry?" Starling answered, visibly relaxing, smiling like a cat who has just successfully eaten the family canary. "There's no hurry. What gave you that idea?"  
  
"But you -" Jake started to object.  
  
"Relax, Jake," Starling interrupted. "We're gonna go ahead and give our order now, and then we're gonna drive around and pick it up. See that nice  spot under the tree over there at the end of the parking lot? That'd be a nice place to kick back and scarf down some breakfast, don't you think? That's where I'm planning to park. If you and your guy Terry meet me there, I'll tell you anything you want to know."  
  
A strained pause followed as Jake stared into the eyes of this odd woman behind the wheel of the Mustang, trying to gauge her thoughts. Her face was black and blue, beat all to shit, and she would look damned good on camera. But something in those eyes didn't look beaten at all. Something there looked like it maybe couldn't be beaten. Not by the likes of Jake "the Snake" Snead, anyway.  
  
"How do I know you won't - " Jake started to ask.  
  
"You don't," Clarice interrupted again. "You don't know that I won't get past the cars in line ahead of me and just take off. But you don't really have a choice, anyway, do you?"  
  
Jake shook her head. "No, I guess not."  
  
"Right," Starling said. "So why don't go on back to your car and order some breakfast for yourself? Try the pancakes, that's my advice."  
  
She pulled the car away from Jake without another word and pulled up to the order box.  
  
"What in hell do you think you're doing, Clarice?" Ardelia asked, still staring out the window, too frustrated with her friend to look at her face. "Do you even know?"  
  
"Sure I do," Clarice answered, after a small pause. "You may not know this, but all us outlaw types have been using the Tattler as a sort of underground Western Union for years. All I'm doing now is sending . . . a sort of telegram. "  
  
This statement succeeded in tempting Ardelia to abandon her view of the McDonald's parking lot and to face Clarice.  
  
"Oh? Is that how it is?" she asked, needing to know yet dreading those answers that she might hear. "What's your message, then, C? What are you gonna say to him?"  
  
Neither of them ever found out what Clarice Starling's answer to Ardelia's question might have been, or if she even had an answer she could have cast into words. The canned, tinny voice of the McDonald's order taker brayed out of the order box and cut the moment short before it was properly begun.   
  
Sometimes, even the most important answers are drowned in the great, surging tide of trivia that is the essential sea of life.  
  
"Welcome to McDonald's," the small tin speaker box whined metallically. "May I take your order?"


	18. Chapter Eighteen

A/N – For those who've expressed some disappointment, I'm afraid we're still not in the GD's POV, at least for one more chapter. In chapter 18, we'll be looking at events through Ardelia's eyes for the most part. Hope we can all hang in a little longer – and please be aware that all reviews – even those that offer honest criticism – are much appreciated and given a great deal of consideration. Again, I wish to thank each and every one of you who have not only taken the time to read my work, but have gone above and beyond to comment on it!

Thanks again,

N.

Chapter Eighteen   
  
October 19, Wednesday, Hoover Dam, 2:00 PM  
  
Clarice Starling and Ardelia Mapp were standing in the light drizzle, gazing down the vast sloping walls of the Hoover Dam to the distant froth of water mightily churning, thousands of feet below. They rested their elbows on the low concrete wall before them, the only barrier between them and the long drop to the roiling water. Cars traversing I-93 on their various errands into and out of Las Vegas growled mechanically at their backs.  
  
Ardelia's emotions were churning too. She had been trying to get her friend to talk about the interview she'd taped for "Tattler Confidential" around nine-thirty this morning all day. Without any success at all so far.  
  
They'd gotten their breakfast order from the pick-up window at McDonald's, breakfast sandwiches and coffee and pancakes that Ardelia had found she no longer wanted. Clarice had pulled her car into the spot she'd pointed out to that despicable little piranha of a reporter earlier, and had then proceeded to lower her convertible top, despite the light mist of the grey Las Vegas day.  
  
Making herself a better subject for the videotape, Ardelia had realized as she watched Starling kill her engine. She's certainly picked up the nuances of this media attention thing damned efficiently, Ardelia mused, and in a very short time. She always was a quick study.  
  
Then Clarice had turned to her and baldly ordered her out of the car.  
  
Ardelia had argued, of course she had. But it hadn't done any good. Clarice was determined, more than determined, that her will in this matter should be done.  
  
"I don't want you on camera, Ardelia," she'd insisted, over and over again, absolutely deaf to all arguments. "And I don't want to waste the morning debating with you about it. Go wait inside the restaurant. I'll come get you when I'm done."  
  
Ardelia had argued, she'd reasoned, she'd pleaded. In the end, she'd turned nasty.  
  
"You don't want him to see me on tape, do you, C? You talk about your nut-job sweetie like he's the best thing since sliced bread, but you're afraid of what might happen if he gets a really good look at me, aren't you? Isn't that so?"  
  
"If you like," Clarice had agreed with chilling unconcern, and continued to stare at Ardelia expectantly. Waiting.  
  
Just waiting for Ardelia to get the hell out of the way.  
  
"God DAMN you," Ardelia had finally commented, and gotten out of the Mustang, all her muscles jerking as she moved, all in angry little knots. "God damn you both. I hate what you're doing, Clarice, I hate everything about it. Go ahead. Send your telegram. Come get me when you're finished. The fun just never ends, does it?"  
  
She'd turned her back on the Mustang and on Clarice and walked away quickly, not because she expected Starling to try to top her suitably crushing parting shot, but because she couldn't stand looking into that flat, abstracted void in her friend's amber eyes another moment.   
  
A flat, abstracted look in the eyes, emotionless yet hellishly acute; purposeful, planning. She imagined that the eyes of a suicide bomber might look just like that, just before the final take-off.  
  
Ardelia had watched through the McDonald's window from a lone seat near the kiddies play area as the reporter, Jake, and the cameraman . . . was his name Terry? . . . as they converged on Clarice and her car like ants converging on a picnic.   
  
She'd seen the way they'd set up the video camera, the lens protected from the misty drizzle with a small umbrella, and she'd seen that Terry guy improvise a quick three-point light set-up with battery operated halogen lamps.  
  
Tape had begun to roll.  
  
Clarice had begun to talk.  
  
Ardelia had seen the way drops of rain had settled and sparkled like a net of diamonds in Starling's new platinum hair. She'd seen the avid way Jake Snead had leaned forward toward Starling as she spoke, asking questions at first, but soon just listening, as rapt as a child hearing the story of the Url King for the very first time.  
  
What was Starling saying, to make the reporter from the Tattler lean forward in that greedy way?   
  
Was she spinning a load of horror-story bull, designed to insult her absent S.O. so thoroughly that he'd come hurtling back from wherever he'd gone to take her to task for it? Or was she publicly gloating on her newfound future as a free woman to send him a message that would reject him so utterly it would keep him away forever? Was she telling this Jake all about her plans to rejoin the FBI when she was fully recovered, thus tacitly informing her former lover that when she had chosen him over the Bureau, she had chosen wrong?  
  
Ardelia watched Starling's battered, discolored face from a distance as best she could, watching her dearest friend talk to the press and unable to gauge her expression among the bruises.   
  
_Was she telling them the truth? Was she out there spilling her guts right now?_  
  
No! No, she wouldn't do that. Aside from anything else, it would leave her liable to an array of actionable felony offenses. Obstruction of Justice. Accessory to Murder After the Fact. More. Anything he'd done over the past year - any crime he'd committed, she would be indictable for as well, as an accomplice. Starling knew her criminal law. She'd have too much sense to make herself liable to prosecution. Hell, they'd made her look like his "victim" for just this reason.  
  
Not to mention that it would be sheer social suicide. He was a pariah, a complete social outcast, yes - but the court of public opinion would judge_ her_ even more harshly. Every woman in Starling and Mapp's age range has seen enough in her own life to know that women and men are held to differing standards of behavior in the mass public mind. A promiscuous man may be a player, but a promiscuous woman is a slut. An reckless man may be a maniac, but a reckless woman is a silly bitch. A violent man may be a bastard, but a violent woman is unnatural, an abomination. Hannibal Lecter was an infamous serial killer, but a woman who loved him - a woman who had voluntarily been living as his mistress - was . . .   
  
_. . . was someone so despised she could slip right off the skin of the earth for a second time without anyone really minding all that much . . ._  
  
No! No, it was impossible. She wouldn't do it. They'd staged the injuries and the sexual assault and the semblance of a kidnapping and everything else for the express purpose of protecting Starling's name. As much as Ardelia did not wish to admit it, Lecter had made certain she was well protected before he'd left her on her own. He'd never allow her to publicly take on his name.   
  
_But he isn't here, is he? He's gone off somewhere and she's alone and he may not have as much control over her actions as you think he does. As, perhaps, he thinks he does . . ._  
  
Controlling Clarice. A fruitless, futile enterprise in impossibility that no one who knew her, no one with any brains, anyway, ever attempted for very long. It was like cupping water in your hands; you might hold it for a time, but eventually it would always slip, drop by drop, out of your grasp.  
  
"I don't want you on camera, Ardelia," Clarice had said.   
  
Why? Because she didn't want her homicidal boyfriend memorizing Ardelia's face? Or was it because Ardelia was an officer of the law, duty bound to respond officially to incriminating statements, liable to prosecution herself if she did not?  
  
Ardelia had risen abruptly from her precast, Formica fast food table and jerked toward the door of the restaurant, dread leaching all the coordination out of her legs and ankles and making her feet numb lumps of clumsy flesh.  
  
But she was too late, if indeed, Clarice had truly chosen to take the disastrous course that Ardelia feared. Terry Phips, the cameraman, had finished filming and was collapsing his portable lights for packing when Ardelia got to the Mustang. His broad, bearded face was unreadable, brown eyes behind glasses far away and lost in thought.   
  
Jake Snead, on the other hand, was not quite so impassive. She looked much as though she'd just witnessed a genuine miracle, and she cradled the tape recorder that held Starling's voice in her skinny arms the same way she might cradle the Ark of the Covenant. Both Tattler employees passed by Ardelia on the way to their puke green wagon without a glance or a word, as though she'd somehow become invisible to their eyes.   
  
Clarice herself was still sitting in the driver's seat of her car, her hair, dampened by the drizzle, clinging in silvery gold ropes to her skull, her damaged face bathed in the comforting mist. She appeared calm, thoughtful, and only the pallor of the unmarked portions of her skin bore mute witness to the possible grave import of whatever she might have said to the reporters.  
  
She didn't look up as Ardelia approached the car, nor when Ardelia opened the passenger door and got in beside her. She started a touch when Ardelia spoke to her, almost as if, for a moment, she was not quite sure who Ardelia was.  
  
"Huh? What was that?" she'd asked.  
  
"I said - what did you say to them, Clarice? What did you tell them?" Ardelia replied.   
  
Clarice smiled, a sweet smile that made her look very young, for a moment.   
  
"I've been kind of getting on your nerves today, huh, Ardie? It's a little hard, lately, being friends with me, I guess."  
  
Ardelia's throat constricted and she had to blink against the burning sensation in her eyes. Had she really thought her old friend had been changed? Had she honestly believed that Lecter had done a number on her sense of herself, and sent her back to the world as someone totally new? This was the very same Starling who'd crammed for exams with her in their old cinder-block dorm room, who'd ruined the pot-roast the first three times Ardelia had tried to show her how to cook it, who knew how to draw funny dog pictures as well as she knew how to shoot.  
  
"Oh, hon," Ardelia had said. "It ain't_ never_been easy to get next to you. But it's always been a privilege."  
  
"You know you're my best friend, don't you Ardelia? You do know that, right?"  
  
"I thought Lecter was your new- "  
  
"No, Ardelia," Clarice interrupted. "You've been getting that wrong. He's my lover . . . my . . . mate. But you - none of that means I love you any less. I wish you could believe that._ You _are still the one who's my best friend. Always."  
  
"I'm just so afraid for you, Starling. That's all. I'm so afraid you cut your own throat out here with these reporters today."  
  
"The truth isn't always what you see, Ardelia. In the next few days, I'd like you to remember that. It's not what you see, it's what you know. It's what you know in your bones."  
  
"Did you learn that Hallmark Theater horseshit from him, Starling?"  
  
Clarice laughed. "No, bless your heart, I sure didn't. That's some old Virginny country-style wisdom I learned at my Daddy's knee. Truth is, I been_ tryin' _to get it through his thick skull for a whole year."  
  
They had smiled at one another and sat silent for a time, none of their quarrels resolved and none of Ardelia's questions answered, but it was a companionable silence, nevertheless.  
  
"Okay," Ardelia had finally said. "Okay. What's next?"  
  
"Next?" Clarice had answered. "Next, I think we need to do a little sightseeing. This is Vegas, after all, tourist capital of the world. Let's go check out a few of the local sights."  
  
Ardelia soon noted, as they toured Las Vegas and surrounding areas for the rest of the morning and afternoon, that Clarice's choices of "local sights" to take in were a bit unorthodox. She'd insisted on visiting Lake Mead, and had spent a great deal of time investigating the various side roads around the lake. She'd driven them up to Mount Charleston, a quick enough drive in her fast car, and they'd had lunch up there. Then she'd insisted on visiting the great Hoover Dam, and this particular "local sight" seemed to pique her interest more than any of the others had.  
  
There'd been a choice of guided tours of the huge hydroelectric facility, a longer one and a less detailed shorter one, and Clarice had chosen the unabridged version. It had been sheer torture for Ardelia to tramp along endlessly with the small group of tourists, following Clarice and listening to the tour-guide, an older gentleman whose dentures had a tendency to slip, go on and on and on about the long history of the great WPA project. The inevitable stale puns involving the words "dam" and "damn" had made her wish she'd brought her weapon.  
  
There had been endless discussion of the art deco influences in the dam's architecture, which, on another day, Ardelia might have found interesting. There'd been talk of the principles of hydroelectric power, and the massive turbines of the great power plant probably should have seemed impressive. The memory of the scores and scores of individual working men whose combined efforts had raised this colossal edifice was evoked, and Ardelia supposed she ought to have been impressed by the endless resource of the human species. That some of those men had died in the epic effort should have touched Ardelia's sense of humility, but all she saw was the alert way Starling's head had come up when one of their tour group asked if the dam might not have its resident ghosts.   
  
It was a stupid question, Ardelia thought. Wherever humans congregated, there they left their identifying mark and their characteristic creations: populations, layers of myth and memory, devices and machines, structures, monuments, great works like dams, and, always, ghosts, as integral a part of the essential effluvium of humanity as garbage or art. Of course the Hoover Dam must be haunted. Every major man-made edifice - from the caves at Lascaux to the cathedral at Notre Dame to the dust-blown desert site of the Manhattan Project - was. A mortal species cursed or gifted with illimitable imagination must always have difficulty putting its dead to rest.  
  
After the interminable tour was finally over, they'd visited the small gift shop up on the highway level of the many-leveled structure, filled with typical tourist bric-a-brac. Clarice had purchased a baseball cap, two T-shirts, and had lingered over several postcards that showed various views of the dam until she'd finally chosen one. Then they'd walked out into the soft and somehow comforting drizzle of the day, and Clarice had wanted to stroll along the low fence that separated the great sloping, curved side of the dam from the traffic of I-93. Despite the light rain and her growing sense of profound unease, Ardelia had been forced to admit to herself that the views really were spectacular.  
  
Ardelia had walked a few steps behind, watching her friend pace the span of the highway across the dam, autos passing busily by on one side of her, a vast empty space plunging dizzily downward on the other. A rough but workable metaphor, Ardelia had thought, for the opposing but interconnected estates of life and death, with Clarice poised, as she had been for the past year, at a point somewhere in between. Ardelia had wondered if Starling, walking on this edge, might be thinking of her own dead.  
  
They'd walked from one end of the span to the other, had then walked halfway back, and had paused at the center to relax a moment and enjoy the view.   
  
Well, more so that Starling might enjoy the view, Ardelia hoped, because she herself wasn't getting the full effect. She was too worried, too frightened by her friend's remote manner and gentle but determined refusal to answer questions and by the odd abstracted look in her eyes.  
  
Starling was gazing down the steep stone walls at her feet to the white water far below. She'd pulled one of her purchases from the gift shop, the postcard, out of the plastic shopping bag they'd given her there, and was idly turning it in her hands. She said nothing.  
  
After several moments of silence, Ardelia began to feel like she might scream if someone didn't say_ something _soon.  
  
"Well, Starling," she finally began, if only to break the too quiet moment. "Are we done with 'sightseeing' now? Is it time to begin the firewalking lessons? Or are we just gonna skip that and move directly to test pilot runs and the amateur lion-taming contest?"  
  
Clarice blinked as she came out of whatever long thoughts had held her gaze and her attention balanced far above the long drop, and she smiled at Ardelia, a little.  
  
"How about Bridge-Burning 101, Mapp? Isn't that what you really want to ask me about?"  
  
Ardelia shrugged. "If you really burned your bridges with those reporters today, it's already done, and there's nothing I can do about it now. It's what you may have cooking for the future that I'm worried about."  
  
"This here is a bridge," Starling commented, almost off-handedly, and waved the postcard in her hand about herself, taking in their high perch above the water, the narrow ribbon of road that spanned it behind them. "In a way. Do you think, if I had enough kerosene maybe, I could burn it down?"  
  
"No. I don't," Ardelia answered sharply. "And why would you want to, anyway?"  
  
"I'm just saying, Ardelia . . ." her gaze at this moment, focused directly on Ardelia's eyes, seemed far too serious and intent, out of all proportion to the casual and irrelevant comment she seemed to be making.   
  
"Some bridges are just too fucking huge to burn," she went on. "They took too long to build and the distance they span is too great. You may see the flames, the fire might be bright and hot enough to have yourself a regular wiener roast, but when the smoke clears, the bridge is still right there."  
  
She dropped her eyes from Ardelia's face and looked back toward the great grey vista beyond the little concrete fence for a second or two, momentarily as distant as the black, rain-sodden clouds on the horizon. Then, with an almost imperceptible nod, as though she'd been weighing various choices and had settled at last on one, she rummaged in her purse and found a pen and a half crumpled, wrinkled mauve envelope. Ardelia could see that the envelope was addressed to "Clarice", and that the hand that name had been written in, though smudged here and there, was all too familiar. Clarice crossed out her own name, and Ardelia felt a strange, urgent desire to warn her friend not to do that, not to cross out her own name like that.   
  
She thinned her lips to hold back this senseless, superstitious admonition, and watched as Clarice scribbled a single initial on the envelope. Ardelia couldn't quite see what Clarice had written, but she really didn't need to see to guess. Clarice wrote only a few words more on her postcard, a spectacular aerial photo of the dam, and then sealed it inside the envelope.  
  
It had been only a few words, Ardelia was sure. No more than a single paragraph, if that. The message could have been_ "Me and Ardelia, Hoover Dam, October '98"_. It could have been _"Qt. milk, loaf bread, doz. eggs, dishwasher soap, six-pack diet Coke"_ or _"Remember to replace glass in Mustang windshield"_ or _"Dear Margot and Judy, thanks for everything"_ or even_ "Note to self: avoid Las Vegas at all costs in future"_. But somehow, Ardelia was certain it hadn't really been any of those things, and her growing sense of concern quadrupled in the brief time it took Clarice to pen her short message. Her fear roughened her tongue when she spoke.  
  
"I am sick to death of listening to you talk in riddles, girl!"  
  
Clarice nodded as if this outburst was expected, and stared, once again, into Ardelia's eyes.  
  
"Are you, Ardie? Okay, then, listen to me now. No more riddles. Late Friday, or Saturday, or maybe, at the latest, Sunday - you'll be seeing Hannib- "  
  
"No, I_ ain't _gonna be seeing that psycho butcher of- " Ardelia interrupted, horrified.  
  
"Yes, you_ will_," Clarice interrupted back, in the same inarguable tones that she might have used to say "the sun will rise" or "the night will fall".  
  
"He'll want to see you, especially you," she continued. "And if you make him look for you, he'll find you anyway, but he'll be_ very _annoyed with you. He'd never harm you, Ardelia, you can trust in that, but- "  
  
"Maybe_ you _can trust in that, Clar-"  
  
"I DO trust in it, Ardelia. I wouldn't be doing what I'm doing right now if I didn't. He'd no more harm my closest friend than he'd swallow a gallon of rocket fuel. Believe what you want, it's not important - what I'm trying to tell you, Ardelia, is that you don't want him angry with you. He doesn't have to hurt you to hurt you, understand?"  
  
Ardelia steeled herself against a cold shudder that was trying to get started in her belly, because she_ did _understand, perfectly. There were many, many different kinds of pain, and she knew Hannibal Lecter was a perfect genius in the administration of all of them.  
  
"So let's see, I'd better stay out in the open like a goddamned sitting duck till he comes, or he'll tear me up when he finds me, that the idea?" she snarled at Clarice. "Nice boyfriend you've got there, can't wait to meet him! Where are you gonna be in all this, can you tell me that? What the fuck_ are _you doing, Clarice?"  
  
"I'm trusting you, Ardelia," Clarice answered quietly, and put the sealed envelope that contained her postcard into Ardelia's hands.   
  
The simple gesture momentarily stilled all of Ardelia's hot objections, suspended all argument and had, in its simplicity and in its implications, a disquieting, quelling element, as though it had been a formal gesture in some ancient and half-remembered ritual. As though Clarice had been casting cursed runes rather than handing over a common postcard.  
  
Once again, Ardelia felt a crawly, totally unfamiliar stirring of superstitious dread.   
  
"I don't want it," she whispered, helplessly aware of how irrational her reaction was. She held the envelope out stiffly to Starling. "Take it_ back_."  
  
"I can't do that. You're the only one I can ask, the only one I trust enough to ask. When you- "  
  
"NO! If it's so important, ask Margot!"  
  
"I can't. Margot is his friend. But you're mine."  
  
This was more the logic of nerve endings, viscera, and blood than the argument of reason, but it was all the more effective for that. Ardelia found she was left without any counter-argument to offer.  
  
"Ardelia, understand what I'm asking, and how I'm asking it. You're my closest friend, and I'm trusting you. When you see him -_ give him this postcard_."  
  
Ardelia dropped her hands, the burden of the postcard, so much heavier than such a small thing should have been, weighing in her grasp. This was a charge she did not want. Some almost prescient inner voice warned her that this was a trust she dared not undertake.  
  
Of course I'd better not undertake it, she snapped at herself mentally. I could live the rest of my life quite happily without ever coming face to face with Hannibal Lecter!  
  
_There's more at stake than that, Ardelia. Much more. Beware._  
  
Ardelia Mapp put aside this compelling inner voice of warning, a conscious effort of will. In the final analysis, it was just that she simply could not say no. She couldn't refuse this charge with Clarice looking right at her. Not without giving up some essential part of herself. She was not a coward, and fear had never ruled her heart. Slowly, she hid the battered envelope, marked with an "H.", just as Ardelia had guessed, in the very bottom of her purse, gazing at Starling steadily as she did.  
  
"You're going back to him, aren't you, Clarice?" she said, not really asking. "Nothing I've said or done today makes any difference at all. If this fucking postcard is so important, why can't you just give it to him yourself?"  
  
Clarice smiled, a fragile, terribly fleeting expression, there and gone in a moment.  
  
"I'll be taking . . . the long way home, Ardie. I may be a bit late."  
  
"And God knows, we wouldn't want the good Doctor to worry," Ardelia responded, bitter sarcasm blemishing her voice._ She _had worried, all right. She had worried herself sick for months on end. For all the good it had done. "You're going home, you say. But, for the last time, Clarice, the way you're going does not have to be "home". Take another road. Please."  
  
"Want to know a weird thing, Ardelia? Once I sort it all out, this is really the only road that's still open, for me. And it's really the only home I've ever known. Thank you for taking the postcard. Maybe, once you've met him, you'll understand all this a little better. I hope so, anyway."  
  
Oh, I'll look forward to THAT, Ardelia thought, but did not say. I'm sure the whole insane, tragic mess will suddenly resolve itself into crystal clarity on that day.  
  
There was nothing further to discuss. The two women left their high place at the very top of the Hoover Dam and returned to Starling's car. They were mostly silent on their way back to the Verger residence, and saw only two or three news vans outside the gates when they got there. Once they were inside, there was a quiet dinner (thanks to Judy Ingram, that most sensitive of hostesses), and a slow, strangely strained evening of television, desultory and inconsequential conversation, and early retiring to bed.   
  
At some time in the deepest reaches of the night, Clarice Starling rose, wrote a quick thank-you note to Margot and Judy that she pinned to her bedspread, and left the house in her Mustang, alone and unseen by anyone.   
  
In all the days that would follow, she would not return.  
  
And Ardelia Mapp, for the rest of her life, would never see her closest, dearest friend again. 


End file.
